


Telepathy [Milex]

by Toastedbuckwheat



Category: Arctic Monkeys, Indie Music RPF, Last Shadow Puppets, Miles Kane - Fandom
Genre: Depression, Espionage, London, M/M, Paranormal, Telepathy, privacy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-05-17 22:57:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14840795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toastedbuckwheat/pseuds/Toastedbuckwheat
Summary: How much would Alex sacrifice to find the person who can read his mind?





	1. Telepathy

**Author's Note:**

> Dear all!  
> Some of you might know me from Wattpad, where this story was originally posted. It's been over a year since I started writing it, and I now decided to throw it in here for you to enjoy (hopefully!)  
> Telepathy as a story was actually a continuation of this first chapter I am presenting for you here - I thought I would stop here so I made it a bit too thick and it became pretty difficult to read I realised - I promise it will become easier once the proper plot is introduced in following chapters.  
> If any significant warnings apply to fragments of this story, I will notify you about it via notes at the beginning.  
> Thank you for stopping by! I will try to transfer the story to AO3 as soon as possible, but you can always hit my Wattpad account for the remaining chunk!
> 
> A. x

The colour he was really not keen on - orange - seemed to be particularly filthy in its embodiment that Overground's handholds were. He would rather sit down just for the relief of not having to touch them, but he had been kind enough to give up his seat for an elderly woman who now put on her tortoise glasses with thick lenses and focused on a crossword with a determination of a scientist working on a new theory. He could see her struggling with one of the questions, but his temptation to prompt her met an obstacle in a form of a sudden feeling of an air bubble stuck in his throat, which was one of many physical symptoms of his current state. He, a person whose life had always been determined by his continuous play with words, could only swallow them back instead of letting them out, feeling disgusted by them like if they were a vomit; a painful brew of unfinished sentences that was gradually going up like water in a too narrow riverbed during the springtime thaw - desperately trying to find a way to destroy everything. Through an awkward stuttering, he could drain this monster of a flood, but a reprieve of following it slightly decreased pressure in his throat was always overwhelmed by an absurd feeling of guilt.   
Words. It was too many of them inside and outside of him. And endlessly there were new ones, whole heavy chains of them, tying him up or growing inside him like tape worms that would soon exhaust him, turning him into a shrunk ball of dirt that once was a rose.   
He could hear them, pronounced so clearly, when he was sure no one around him was speaking. Was it just his tired, obsessed brain that was playing tricks to bemuddle him, or he was really developing some psychotic disorder? Being a living carboy full of undistilled sentences was making it really hard to tell which of them are real, and which are mere hallucination. He just wanted them to go. Squinting his eyes, he imagined the interior of the carriage without the text. It looked like a large-scale piece of modern art, a juxtaposition of bright colours, the informative stickers became enigmatic squares, reduced to a primeval colour code of a jungle: yellow - do not touch!; blue - peace and beauty of the skies; red - a fruit you were looking for. Stripped of the names that made its simplicity legible, the tube map looked like a Pollock-ish skein, suddenly irrelevant to the topography of the metropolis. The gallery of adverts above the windows was now open to thousands of new interpretations. The old lady with tortoise glasses was a pathetic, surrealistic character with her head hovering over a blank, purposeless newspaper, stuck on the puzzle that, devoid of its code, was impossible to solve.   
He surrendered to an impression that the relation between himself and the space became notably ambiguous. Like if he was staring at a picture of Rubin's vase for too long, he could not decide whether the rectangular shape of the window - in which a reflection of his pale face was flickering whenever the train was running through a tunnel - was indeed a window, or maybe a screen presenting a quickly moving image. His thoughts got interrupted by a group of youth that filled the carriage after the door opened at Shoreditch High Street Station. The sudden hubbub of verbalised happiness made his head spin like if he had been heedless enough to mix too many types of alcohol. A sudden afflux in his carboy caused a feel of nausea. But he focused on a particular voice that was louder and clearer, like if its presence was beyond the sounds of this formicary. It was well audible, yet its tone suggested it was barely a whisper, so insubstantial that it could have been his own never pronounced thought; the voice was indefinable  like if it never came through someone's vocal cords. The way it sounded reminded him of the inner voice, destitute of the flaw of his thick Yorkshire accent, that he could hear in his head while he was slowly reading something. 

"Oh god, why is it even allowed here. Please, someone tell her something, I don't wanna be the one to sound rude. Should I tell her to stop? Hell no, I'm too overdressed for that, I would look like some racist fussy toff. But for fuck's sake, it smells so disgusting and she's smacking, what's wrong with people who eat on a train!"

He turned around to hear what the Voice was talking about. It could not have been his imagination as he had not previously seen the subject of it's complaints. Glancing between people's heads he managed to notice a woman who, having a lot of shopping bags, occupied two seats by the next door. Sitting comfortably, she was unhurriedly consuming a content of her red chip shop paper box, pensively holding the glazed chicken thigh. Having stripped it off the spiced flesh, she began gnawing at the crunchy cartilage, making an awful sound while she was grinding it between her teeth. It was indeed disgusting, the Northerner agreed.

"Okay, try not to think of it. Distract yourself. Some song? That lad's wearing real nice boots. I think I too need a pair of boots with a buckle... It would look boss with me new jeans. Shiny shiny, shiny boots of leather, whiplash.."

Whiplash girl-child in the dark. The Voice was now quietly humming _Venus in Furs_ , however the man could swear that he could also hear high-processed bits of the record itself that now sounded like a rhythmic squawking; Lou's vocal was appearing sometimes so he and the Voice could sing in an imagined unison, to then fade away like if they forgot the lyrics.   
The man reflexively tried to unblock his ear with his index finger like if this could clarify the situation. None of the bored passengers seemed to hear a person singing, which assured him that it was just himself positively going crazy. It felt like being a stowaway in someone's head; he had not seen the eating lady or the nice boots, neither he had ever memorised the lyrics of  _Venus in Furs,_ which he could now hear again, sung firmly to drown out the revolting smacking.  
Something was suggesting him that it was not a highly unreal coincidence; he was sure he could actually hear someone's current of thoughts. The only other possible option was that his own astral body was sat somewhere else in the carriage, listening to The Velvet Underground on his player - but he rejected this assumption as equally unlikely.  He was almost desperate enough to push himself through the crowd just to look in the face of every single passenger sitting close to the chip shop woman and find the owner of the Voice, however, standing right next to the door in the train that was now far from the next station, he decided he had no valid excuse to do it. As the personification of the unapproachable ideal of the Received Pronunciation announced that the train was approaching Canonbury, the song paused suddenly and he heard the Voice gasping in relief:

"Finally, get out of me way people, I just wanna get the fuck outta here as soon as possible..."

Its sound became fainter as the person got off the train and blended with the crowd of samey people who, wearing their dull black coats, looked like a gathering of wet miserable penguins. Although he could not find a rational justification of his actions, the Northern man was determined to follow the Voice. For some reason it seemed to be an element of a jigsaw that he had never realised was missing; his only chance to fix himself, to answer the questions that he had not yet asked.  
Literally jumping off the train, he began running in the only reasonable direction pointed by the slightly glowing, yellow "Way out". The current of people narrowed itself to pass through the gate, forcing him to slow down and wait for his turn in the race for some fresh air. Unmindfully, he stepped on the edge of a long black dress of some elderly niqabi woman that he had not even noticed due to her diminutive posture. It caused both of them to fall on the ground, for which he forthwith apologised, helping her to stand up and making sure nothing had happened to her. He himself torn his jeans on his knee, and little grains of grit were stinging his bleeding barked skin. However it was nothing to compare with the internal scream that was about to blow him up from the inside. Now, his ears were only detecting ordinary commotion of the city. The Voice was nowhere to be found.

He decided to walk all his way to his flat in Angel. The sun had already hid itself behind the cityscape; the serene yet dull sky was variegated by red and white lights of the jets. Only when he started walking upstairs he became aware of the pain in his knee, but he welcomed it as a good impulse that was waking him up from his trance of sadness and defeat. He could not find a reason why tonight's incident had such an impact on him, but it left him falling apart. His body felt like an effigy when he threw himself on the bed, biting his lips in a last attempt to hold back the tears. He snatched a guitar away from its rack and thoughtlessly started playing the most bitter chords that his fingers could find on the strings, ripping ruthlessly until one of them broke with an angry twang. Soon, he added his voice that he deliberately had not shaped into any words. It was just a primary bellow from the bottom of his heart, stirring the toxic brew inside him like a cyclone, he was screaming as loud as he could which finally left him breathless, tearing up, with his throat so sore that he probably would not be able to speak for days. Powerlessly, his hands fell of the instrument and the man curled himself into a crying ball, deedless like an infant left alone in a cold dark room. Through a noise of his own blood rhythmically pounding in his head, he heard someone knocking on his front door. Correctly assuming it was only some angry neighbours whose perfect evening he had just violated with his despair, he decided to reply with an ironic "I'm playing Yoko Ono", after which he came back to crying with his gaze fixed on the ceiling. 

Since that evening the Voice had become his obsession. His best friends, whom he had avoided from the beginning of his depression now became even more concerned about his state. One day he accidentally bumped into Matt, whom he had known since both of them were toddlers. The lad begged him to seek help from the psychiatrist, assured that he would be supported by all of his friends and family, but that first he needed to at least try to help himself. The Northerner agreed, but he knew what was the only cure he could rely on. The Voice was somewhere in London. He had spotted glimpses of him in sundry parts of the metropolis. In Farringdon, by some shop selling glimmering variety of vintage watches and jewellery. In Piccadilly, he heard him scrutinising the fabric of some masterclass suit in the display window of a tailor shop - one of those that would make a good background for a tourist snapshot, but one would rather buy a car than any of the products. But also in much different in its vibe Stoke Newington, just by the station, somewhere in the crowd of outlandishly dressed people queuing to a tiny dive bar where Thurston Moore was supposed to play that night as a local music festival's guest star.   
In each of the situations, the Voice managed to slip out before the lad was able to get a break and follow him. However, every incident was adding to a map, to a patchwork portrait of the mysterious creature. He definitely had interest in luxury goods and haute couture, yet the fact he had appeared by the tube stations so many times, as well as the always informal manner of his unpronounced speech, hinted he must not have been too posh. The depressed Yorkshire youngster grabbed a pen and his ragged notebook to make a list of attributes of the man he was seeking for, making an use of his overly analytic mind and love for the language.   
The cryptic man's vocabulary was definitely coming from some Northern dialect, yet different from his own. He wrote down a list of most significant phrases and, having overlooked them, he decided they could only be Scouse. The Voice had learned a lot of song lyrics by heart and often used them as a commentary to his surroundings. He definitely had a good sense of style and knew a lot about materials and current trends; his clothes was supposedly classy and quite formal, but rather not uniform-ish. He seemed to be a fairly wealthy person, but not reach enough to afford the items he really wanted, what the boy guessed from his usage of verbs; he could have been a modern dandy. He was rather introspective, maybe even slightly narcissistic? So far, his thoughts had never been focused on any other person, although he paid a lot of attention to people's clothes. They seemed to have a similar taste in music and music venues. Was he a designer? Possibly a musician? Some sort of creative person, definitely.   
The lad's train of thought got interrupted by his phone's vibration breaking the silence. The screen flashed with in a way that was way to bright for his eyes that got used to gloom. Crinkling his eyes, he swiped to unlock the screen and read the intruder's message. It was Matt.

"Hey Alex! Hope ur feeling better. Wanna hang out 2nite? Jamie and me are gonna see Rosemarie play with her band. 8.30 at Birthdays? We could all go to mine after to chill & have some drinks" 

The man really appreciated that his friends had never gave up and continuously tried to get him out of his flat, his overthinking and his irrational sadness. He tapped the 'reply' button and started writing an apologising, negative response, genuinely describing his state in which he was not really a party animal. Halfway, he hesitated and began deleting his words, but listening to his common sense prompting that this evening was going to be another disaster, he rewrote the message in a similar manner. His thumb was just about to land on the 'send' icon when, following a sudden impulse, he deleted the whole text again and, after some minutes when he was deciding on right words like if what he was writing was a legislation law, he replied with a simple:

 "I'll get a shower and be there. Sorry, feeling a bit mardy today, but I really wanna see u guys"

He got an immediate reply from his mate.

"It's ok Al you can just sit n relax it's gonna be a chilled gig Rosie told me. C ya"

Not sure if his decision was right, the youngster undressed, discarding his clothes on the floor, and let the hot water relax his muscles that were tense from his constant worry. Once he got out, he examined his face in the mirror; his pale, slender body that was getting skinnier every day. With an effort, he put on an affable smile and made some happy faces that any normative peer of his would do when surrounded by his besties. Behaving normally required some training before a hard test that tonight's party was. He opened a vintage blue tin of pomade, dipped a fingertip in the yellow, mildly fragranced substance, placed a bit in his palm and rubbed it  intensively until it became warm and soft. Running his hands through his soft brown hair, he spread the grease evenly, and then neatly slicked it back, which definitely added to the disguise of a happy young man he was putting on. The vibrant tone of vetiver in his perfume whetted his senses and actually made him feel fresh and slightly more confident. He decided on some black slim-fit jeans, black boots, a plain black t-shirt and his everyday leather jacket, which, still representing his style, could let him remain fairly invisible. Dressed up like that, in the noise of the evening traffic that, after years of living in the city, he had stopped noticing, Alex calmly walked towards the bus stop.

It was surprisingly warm for a November evening; the air was crisp, contrary to the suspension of fog and smog that traditionally occurred in the late autumn. Apart from a few young people at the back who were busy with their phones, the upstairs of the bus was almost empty, so Alex had a comfort of being able to choose any seat he wanted, away from any intruders. There was some song annoyingly stuck in his head, and usually the cure would be listening to it on a loop until he would get bored with it, causing the tune to eventually leave him. Albeit, since his first encounter with the Voice, he had never used earphones in public, wanting to remain alert just in case it he could find a trace of the person he was searching for. People who had recently seen him were concerned about his behaviour - he was always watchful like a wild animal, with his eyes open wide, often turning his head to let his hearing pierce the thick web of noises. They were sure the man was getting paranoid, or suspected he was influenced by some drugs. Alex could not tell them the truth, not before solving the situation; otherwise they would call him a madcap. His mental health was far from perfection, he was aware of it - but he was more than sure that this, despite being so off the wall, was not another disorder, but a real experience. Even in his head he avoided using this word as he associated it exclusively with glass balls and New Age freaks - but it was the only term that could describe this phenomenon. Telepathy.

There was one question that kept repeatedly flashing in his head: if he could hear this man's thoughts, was it mutual? Was he aware of Alex? Maybe he was so unreachable because he knew that someone was obsessively chasing him and actually devoting all his thoughts to him? An idea that the mysterious being could hear the Northerner's never verbalised, but so palpable -desperation, confusion and slurry sorrow - was making the man cringe. Besides, what was so unusual in this unknown probably-dandy that made him the only person whose thoughts Alex could hear? If he had been blessed with this incredible talent, why could he not read the mind of people like Matt, or his own mother, or his now ex-girlfriends, or anyone he actually ever had a strong connection with. Why, out of seven billions options, was it some random Scouser?

He blinked intensively to wake himself up from this session of overthinking. He could not let this take over another night as he was supposed to spend it with people, and he actually wanted it to be fun. It was one of his better days; it meant that instead of feeling like if he was being pulled into the fathomless blackness, he was calmly drifting on the cold surface of the endless ocean, with his head just above the waves, observing the glitter on the dome of the sky.   
The fluorescent light in the bus was irritating his eyes, making everything look flat like a picture taken with a too bright flash. Gladly, in the pocket of his jacket he found a pair of cheap Lennon-style sunglasses he had bought on one of this year's summer festivals. Purchasing them had been a rash choice - he had just lost his other shades, so being tipsy and feeling goofy, he had decided on a most ridiculous model. Wearing them while casually going somewhere alone was making him feel very self-conscious, but on the other hand, they would always remind him of happy times. Whenever he was wearing them, his mates would always recall hundreds of memories, starting from repeating stories related to that festival, to then turn the evening into an exchange of anecdotes about their juvenile adventures. Yes, these sunglasses were an appropriate choice for a good night he was going to have, and their yellow tint added a value to a view of this dull interior of a double-decker. For the first time in weeks, Alex could feel his body relaxing. He sat as comfortably as it was possible on a bus seat and, very quietly, started humming the song that was on his mind.   
The bus stop announcements are something one who commutes a lot never pays much attention to; you notice them when you hear your stop's name, or when their usual rhythm gets interrupted by an unexpected change.   
Alex snapped out of his daydreaming when the announcement informed him that the bus was on diversion. Not feeling like ending up in an unknown part of the city,  he decided to get off and have a walk to the club, which was not too far away. A sudden feeling of hunger was an unforeseen yet good sign confirming an improvement of his mood; having gotten to the high street, he walked into an off -licence and bought a chocolate bar, his favourite one - with hazelnuts. Its sweet taste made his eyes open wider in delight, endorphin powered the apparatus of his usually overtired brain. The ordinary surroundings of any bigger station - vibrating hubbub and dirt - did not bother him now. He felt like a single erythrocyte taking part in a cyclical performance of the pulse. Or maybe he was some other type of a cell? Observing a man wearing a yellow high-visibility jacket who was emptying a bin, Alex reached into his carboy full of useless vocabulary and found a word "macrophage". Was he himself an erythrocyte? No, it was a wrong metaphor - rethinking it, he would rather call himself a cancer cell. A Nick Drake's song played in his head.  _I'm a parasite on this town..._

He shook his head to break this negative train of thought. He really did not want his mood to drop again, not when he was about to arrive to the club. As he was striding, he took a last bite of his chocolate bar and looked around in order to find another bin so he could get rid of the wrapper, when suddenly he heard it again. Louder than the din of the passing vehicles, clearer than a voice of some woman that was speaking on a phone just few steps behind him - the Voice almost echoed in one of the alleys. Its words were just unordered fritters of observations, and Alex could swear he could also feel the abstract part of the stranger's thoughts; although he himself was warm from a fast walk, he felt his hands getting stiff of the cold, but when he tried to move them, they were alright - the impression belonged to someone else and had been projected on his own body. The one he was looking for must have been incredibly close. Without a second of hesitation, Alex ran into the alley. His heart was pounding louder than the heels of his boots hitting the pavement; some people gave him a concerned look, trying to guess a reason of his desperate hurry, but he paid no attention to them.  
When he got to the junction, he stopped for a second to listen for Voice's presence. His body felt heavy after a run and his throat became dry, but there was no time for a rest. He looked around and decided on a direction that in his opinion was most likely. Mercifully, he heard the creature read a name of one of the streets, in which Alex immediately turned. Dim lights and lively noise of some club emerged from the darkness of otherwise completely dead area. In front of it there was a tangle of bicycles chaotically locked to the railings; outside, around big wooden tables, there was some people smoking and animatedly discussing something. Brushing past an intimidating looking doorman, Alex walked in, welcomed by a sweet smell of beer and muffed sound of live music coming from the room at the back. But his brain, stunned by hyperventilation, could only detect one single voice, so abstract, devoid of an accent or intonation.

"Hmmm, what do I want. Should I start with a bevvy? Oh they have this nice gin I had the other night..."

There was at least fifteen people leaning on the counter, having a chat or waiting to be served. Listening to the Voice reading the spirits labels in his mind, Alex paced around straining his ears, when eventually he noticed a barmaid approaching someone and heard a husky, quite high-pitched voice colourised by a soft yet distinct Scouse accent. 

"Hiya... Hmm, could I please get aa..." still making his mind, the man elongated the words. Before he managed to declaim his thoughts, Alex heard them, and in a short pulse he almost shouted: 

"Spiced gin and ginger ale for this fella. In a tall glass, wi' a lot of ice and a slice of orange, if you 'aven't got it, lemon's fine"

The barmaid nodded and got busy with preparing the drink, while Alex stood there petrified, amused by his own courage. With a stylishness of a soldier, the man slowly turned around on his heels and pierced him with a gaze of his big, amber eyes. His lips parted in astonishment. Alex was about to faint, the still lingering taste of chocolate that he had enjoyed so much just few minutes ago was now making him want to throw up. Unable to say a single word, he just stood in place, breathing irregularly, feeling his knees getting weak.   
The sudden materialisation of all his assumptions and dreams was standing a metre from him. The view of the man he had been seeking for was now soaking in his eyes. He was tall and slender, yet very proportional - wearing a well tailored, claret suit jacket, black tight jeans and a navy button down with some elaborate floral pattern. His face - now pale, with all mixed emotions clearly visible -  looked noble, framed by a straight fringe of his brown hair.  
Although he had nothing against an idea of being bisexual, never in his life Alex had questioned his preferences, he simply had no reasons to do that even though he could admit that he found some men fascinating. The fact that the stranger he got obsessed with was a male was rather insignificant - in his quest there was no dimension of affection or attraction, he had just wanted to find this extraordinary person who so unexpectedly sneaked into his mind. But now, examining his appearance, Alex got hit by a realisation that the mythic being was classy and truly attractive. In a second he thought that, he noticed the man in front of him curling his thin lips in an affable smirk.

"Thank you. You too. This shaggy hair on a pomade really suits ye"

Alex smiled timidly in response, but his face did not reflect the whirlwind of contrasting emotions that were tearing him apart. He parted his lips in order to say something, to spit out the million questions which, since the incident on the train, had had a hold on him - but he could not form a single word, like if he was mute or like if he had suddenly forgotten all the languages he could speak. The relentless flood of the words was pressing hardly on the fragile bubble of his inner carboy, and as the cork got stuck, it was just seconds away from an explosion. The boy started trembling, he felt lost and exposed. He knew exactly what was coming next: an anxiety attack that would make him come undone. He was about to turn around and run away to at least save his dignity, but after weeks of loosing his mind and gaining reputation of a lunatic, he could not waste his possibly only chance to find an explanation. Fortunately, the man in front of him could feel it clearly; he did not need Alex to speak to be able to understand his state. He grabbed the shaking man by the shoulders; the radiating warmth of his hands was now Alex's only contact with reality. People in the pub were peeking  at this unusual scene, and the barmaid stood confused with a drink ready in her hand. Without even looking back, the dandy threw a tenner on the counter and immediately took Alex - who was now hyperventilating and about to burst in tears - outside of the venue.

"Hey hey, it's alright laa, shhh.."  _Shieet what should I do to make him calm down?_ He almost had to force the smaller man to walk; his body, paralysed by the attack, was refusing to cooperate - "Hush, we're gonna talk, 's alright, first just chill okay? Me name is Miles." not breaking the physical contact, he delicately pushed him on one of the benches in - empty in the autumn time-  back garden, and sat down next to him.

"A-Alex..." 

"Nice to meet ye, Alex. I'm not going anywhere okay? Ye need to calm down, breathe laa, breathe with me okay, inhaaaalee..." Alex was avoiding eye contact, but feeling his companion's big peaceful eyes staring at him, he slowly started regaining his composure. "Do ye want a drink or summat? Anything that could help you?

_No, just hold me... I finally found him. At least once I found something I was searching for_

Without waiting for a proper reply, Miles casually wrapped his arm around him and started slowly stroking his shoulder. 

"Choerilus?"

"Choerilus what?" Alex opened his eyes pensively, trying to localise a memory he definitely had with this word.

"Alexander the Great's court-poet. Nine letters, number seven across." Miles smirked when he recalled a crossword question that a lady with tortoise glasses had been struggling with.   
  
 _So he could hear me all the time_    Alex was about to panic again. 

"I hear everyone's thoughts. If ye were me, you'd probably find it really annoying. It's like being in the screaming crowd, you know what I mean? It's like a background noise... So I kind of learned how to ignore it, otherwise I would totally loose me mind. Also, I feel bad for my constant, though unintentional, eavesdropping." the Scouser shook his head as he pulled out a cigarette.

_Fuck now I realised that I was chasing him like a proper stalker_

"Why did you follow me? I must admit it's a bit bonkers." he asked, slowly exhaling the grey smoke.

_The crisp November air turns it into an almost material ghost. I imagine that under magnification, I could see the embroidery of microscopic crystals of ice - multiple diadems woven with the jewels of his breath_

"I felt... I don't know how to explain it... I thought it was hallucinations, a schizophrenia...  Until I figured I could hear your thoughts, exclusively yours..." Nervously, the Northern boy ran his hands through his hair, grabbed a fistful of it and fixed his gaze on the torn off tips of his boots. "I'm sorry..."

_I didn't know I needed you until I first heard your meaningless thoughts. I'm not exactly sure what I need you for. I have no bloody idea how some random fella that I don't know at all is supposed to save my life, but I have a strong feeling that you're the person to do this_

"Don't be. It must be destiny then!" he laughed cheerfully and patted the other boy's shoulder in a friendly manner, when Alex's phone beeped, signalising a message from Matt.

"Rosie's playing in 15 mins, u comin?"

The ruthlessly bright light of the screen woke him up. Alex realised he forgot about the entire world; at the moment he actually did not care about the gig, his friends, or anything else. He was like a sculpture of solid steel that, willingly or not, was being pulled closer and closer towards a pervasively strong magnet. Blinking intensively, he won over his disorientation and found the round pictograph of a green receiver. He tapped it with his shaky hand and pressed the phone to his ear.

"Matt, 'ey... I'm nearby, but I don't know if I'm comin'... Noo, I'm fine, I'm fine, just... I'll tell you later, don't worry about me. Might join ya later... Hugs and kisses for Rosie and the boys... 

He was in the middle of the call when he felt a weird sensation. Although the lad's hand was innocently resting on Alex's shoulder, he had an impression that it slid to the level of his waist and squeezed it softly; later he felt the invisible yet realistically warm and soft fingers draw patterns on his belly and fiddle with the wrinkles of his t-shirt. The boy blushed and held back the urge to pull away, being sure it was just his sick imagination, until he heard Miles's voice and thoughts sound in unison:

_Fuck, he actually felt it "_ Fuck, sorry, I didn't mean it, sorry, it was like proper gay" he was genuinely embarrassed.  _Miles why are you always like a fifteen year old when you have some cutiepie around yeself"_

"No, I don't mind, really... " Probably for the first time in months, Alex giggled artlessly at the compliment and Miles's sudden awkwardness. Gradually, his breath was becoming regular again and he freewheelingly rested his head on the man's shoulder, forgetting that the pomade could possibly stain the fine fabric of his jacket. Like a cassette tape, a list of his questions unwound, turning into a hank of a chaos. But he could feel Miles's long slender fingers imperceptibly untangle and decode it. Without restraint, the dandy boy leaned in, so their warm, pulsing temples were in contact. He was probably the only person in the world who did not need the imperfect mould of the language to comprehend the ideas that had formed in someone's head. It was also obvious that the Scouser had much more control over his own mind; he must have had trained himself as now, when he was focused on soothing the newly met boy, he turned his own thoughts down until they became lulling rustle. Like a scarified soil, he sucked out and absorbed the sea storm of words and never verbalised nucleuses of them that for so long had been destroying Alex from the inside, keeping his own sea of thoughts flat like a glass plate, flickering softly under the touch of summery breeze. The twosome was like a pair of communicating vessels, balancing one another. The sudden disappearance of an unendurable load that had been ballasting his naked mind, Alex felt relieved and drowsy like an infant who finally found peace in someone's caring arms. The muffled sound of the bass and drums and constant twitter of the people having a smoke outside seemed to be on the other side of the water's surface - noticeable but gnatlike. The wind got cold and was now joggling the shimmering retro fairy lights, changing the Rembrandt-esque shadows that were playing on Alex's face - which changed completely as though last couple minutes - or maybe quarters - made his age void, transmogrifying him back into his younger self from the times when everything was easier. Miles, with his artist's eye, could not help but rhapsodise about it with a cheerful smile on his tender face, to which the other man replied with a soft grin. Soon, Alex would have to worry about getting home, or maybe not getting there - but now he simply zipped up his jacket, enjoying this state of peace that hopefully would last forever. 

The yarn of words and phrases became a fine, soft thread. Having had swept all the bits of glass and numerous long dangerous needles, Miles picked up and handled him a crochet hook the boy had been looking for.  
Stitch by stitch, the thread would turn into a most beautiful lace of poetry.   
Patience is a virtue.

 

 

 


	2. I need a fix

Cornerways, from one side of the ceiling to another, once in a minute the grey was being torn by a white light of the passing cars. The drone of the engines was kept at distance by the powerful barrier of the window glass - speckled by the cloudy traces of the foul tears of perennial rains. Or maybe was it a sound of thunders? Every time when the light illuminated, the monochromatic painting of shadows travelled through the walls of the white cube of the room - an ambiguous fraction of what possibly was on the exterior. Time and time again, it faded away, letting the gloominess veil the view again - like if during a windy weather a child struggled to light up the candle inside their magic lantern which could project fairy-tale pictures on the walls of the dollhouse, in which a lonely puppet was trapped - laying still on his cold bed. 

Supine, with his bleary eyes wide open penetrating an undefined spot on the ceiling, Alex looked like a modern victim of lobotomy. After what was must have been ages, he blinked, reality welcoming him with a feel of grit mattifying the vitreous surface of his eyes. In order to stop this pain, he closed them reflexively, letting a tear roll down his cheek. Although it was a mere reaction to irritation, it broke a dam, the existence of which he was not even aware of - making him burst out crying until he felt even more empty than before. So empty that what was draining him seemed to have drilled a hole in the bottom of the vessel of his essence, and was now sucking any moisture out of the ground on which it was standing.

Alex had become a part of a twosome of communicating vessels. However, one of them seemed to be in possession of a particularly strong magnetic power.

Everything that used to weigh him down, but also what constituted his complex person - an immense museum of words which he struggled to keep in check, his fears, his ecstasy - it all walked away with Miles Kane, whom he had met last night, and was now kept in his noble pale hands somewhere in the streets of Belsize Park. Alex, or maybe a hollow mould of him, was here, laying on his perfectly made bed, a lifeless puppet left with no one to move its invisible strings.

There was another sound that complimented the rhythm of the passing vehicles. From under what felt like a mile deep water, he contemplated the dialogue of the city's bombination and a repeating, peculiarly familiar buzz. He lost himself in this postindustrial unison until he realised that it was a sound of his phone that was vibrating on the table for the hundredth. Only half aware of what was happening, Alex relied on his muscle memory which made his body reach out for the glowing device, swipe the green icon and bring it to his ear. Fighting the stiffness of his vocal chords, he let out a quiet, unspecified growl, as even the simplest words like "hello" seemed to be unreachable, suspended in an infinite void, like if he had forgotten his mother language. 

"Alex speakin'?" He eventually managed to mutter. 

"Ee up Al! 'Ow do, tha o'reyt?" There was a genuine concern in Matt's distorted voice.

"Yeah... Yeah, all good, why? 'ow was t'gig?" Very slowly, Alex's brain sprung into life and he began regaining his ability to communicate, trying to figure out how many hours had passed by since he laid down and let his thought sink into the void.

"Yeah it was great man, we went for some drinks after, t'guys from that headlining band joined us later on, they were a laugh, really nice kids I tell ya, such a shame you didn't come! What happened?"

"Oh man... Long story tha knows..." Alex whispered loudly, rubbing his still searing eyes.

"Did I wake tha up? Hangover?" 

"No... No, I'm okay actually..."

The silence on the other side was almost piercing, every millisecond of it clearly indicating Matt's doubts in Alex's assertions. He had only two options: one that would be unreasonable - to immediately hang up in order to avoid the whys and wherefores, and the other one - telling the story of last night, which was utterly absurd on its own. Under the pressure of this silence, he decided on the second one.

"I... I met him last neet."

"Who?"

"I think I told ya... Did I? Matt, I'm not goin' crazeh, I really met 'im right? Dandy guy I told ya 'bout. The one I was trynna find after I heard... his thoughts, I suppose... Like a... a telepath, if yanno wha' I mean... I..."

A rustle of an exhale was Matt's response. 

"You've never told me about it, Alex." He added after a while, studiously pronouncing each of the components of this sentence, behind which he hid a dozen of questions. "Is that what you've been bothering your head about recently?"

"Yeah, sorreh, I've been so absentminded... Jesus, Matt. Please, don't talk about it with anyone, okay? I mean, I get that you probably don't understand, 'ts fine, but someone else would think I'm proper nuts."

"Okay, but... Hearing thoughts? You what?"

Suddenly, Alex clicked. On no account could he tell Matt - even though he was like brother to him - about his eldritch experience. Instead, desperate to get out of the trap that this conversation became, he decided on a little lie. 

"No, forget about it. It was a fookin' metaphor, you blockhead! I mean..." Alex's voice suspended as he tried to pick the right words, which only added to the impression he was trying to make.

"Okay, to put it simply... A couple weeks ago I met a lad, on the Overground, totally random thing... An I... I dunno, I thought he was charming? Like, really viewsome... It was nigglin' me so bad... Yanno, I'm not gay, I never thought I'd ever get so... affected? So I... I spotted him on me way to Birthdays, I decided to follow him - don't laugh!" 

Despite of that, Matt sniggered wholeheartedly. 

"Fookin' dork. Anyway, there's like nine millions of people in London, right? And I saw 'im another time! So I followed 'im to some dive near Dalston Station, we had a chat... Are ya proud of me? I talked to someone! Yeah, so... It's a nice fella, sharp as fuck..." Alex exhaled in relief. He managed to describe the quintessence of last night's events avoiding the inconvenient paranormal side of it. He would probably have to deal with the consequences of his prevarication, but he reckoned it would definitely be easier than getting away from the image of a fruitcake that telling the straight low would give him. 

"Al, 'onestly, there's nothing wrong with that, I mean, yer being a brat and a proper creeper but it's sorta sweet. But not that I'm surprised tha knows, we all know that deep inside you're as bent as a nine-bob note." Matt joked in a much more relaxed, warm voice.

"Fook you, it's t' first time, I've never even hinted being interested in guys!" 

"Oh aye?? Ye need t' see thissen in t' mirror then! Anyway, 'ave you got 'is number?"

"I fookin' 'ave!" Alex was steaming.

"Well done! You go girl!"

"Shut your gob! Okay, I gotta finish now. I'll call ya later."

"O'reyt, condoms, lube, remember-"

"Yeah, bye Mr Expert"

Resignedly, Alex placed the phone on the floor by the bed and came back to his previous position of the ceiling observer. The heat lingering on his cheeks was the only trace of the mask of wit that had just fell of his face and broke into a million pieces like an old china bibelot. Although he successfully winged it, the conversation made him exhausted, his rarely used throat felt slightly sore after the attempt of speaking beyond the level of whispers and hissing. However, he almost congratulated himself for once again passing for a high-functioning lad, the Alex whom everyone adored, the life of the party sparking joyful banter, as juvenile as they remembered him from high school - while at the moment he felt caliginous and intangible like the shadows dancing on the walls. There was no Alex. This impression was not accompanied by any sadness or fear. It was an almost complete lack of feelings, his senses seemed to experience a nothingness. When he closed his eyes, he could notice the barely palpable vibration of what he interpreted as the particles of his body, or maybe soul, being torn apart, similarly to the feel of being both paralysed and dissolved while immersing into a deep sleep. However, every time he was sure that he was making a tailspin towards the oblivion, there was something like a strong bungee rope belaying him - one of not too many thoughts left in his head, a thought of Miles Kane.

Alex had made it up, but the way he told Matt about his feelings towards the mysterious gentleman was not far from being truth. Although on no account was it romantic and his body simply refused to properly lust after a male, he had to admit he literally went crazy for Miles. Never in his life had he met such an selcouth person - everything about this man seemed unusual, the contrast between his classy style and thick melodious accent, the way he moved his slender hands, his mod haircut making him look like a snap from some 60's  fashion magazine to the point that looking at him Alex wondered why was he not a black-and-white image. But obviously his most unusual feature was the ability to hear people's thoughts and to soothe Alex within seconds. Analysing the man as a whole, Alex came to the conclusion that in normal circumstances he probably would not be fond of Miles who at first seemed to be an arrogant egotist dandy. After spending some time together, this opinion got confirmed, although Alex decided that in Miles' case these traits were not entirely negative. There was something alluring in his confidence that was on the edge between charisma and narcissism. Moreover, in Alex's estimation the man had all reasons to love himself if he did - having a perfect, quite old-fashioned sense of style and with his superficies in balance between masculinity and subtlety, Miles was an example of how how well an Englishman can look. Unlike Alex's, his thoughts - even if very abstract - were clear and bright, and overall he seemed to be a mentally stable person. 

They spent last night chatting among the yellow retro fairy lights in the club's back garden, their bodies close in a casual yet warm embrace, until they decided to go for a stroll when it got to cold to stay sitting down. Breathing in the sobering crisp air, they let the sound of their steps echo in the long empty alleys of terraced houses. The pattern of orange squares - windows behind which people were still awake - was slowly dissolving into darkness. The silence of the night muted their speech and at some point there were just walking side by side, looking ahead, their thoughts hushed to the level of steady susurrus. Every time they were about to go round the bend, Alex felt a need to glance towards his companion, scared that he would vanish into thin air like he had done before, but instead he was always greeted with a soft smile and a benign look. It turned out that they had lived fairly close to each other - Miles in the north of Camden, Alex in more central Angel - so they could take the same bus home. Not being in a rush, they decided against hailing a cab, and Alex hoped that it was because Miles wanted to spend more time with him as much as Alex did. When he jumped off the bus and waved at Miles, who looked surreal smiling back at him in a frame of the red double-decker's window, he felt about to faint. The bus, now fading away in the thick mist, seemed to be painted with litres of own blood pumped out of his body, stealing his life away. Miles left, taking Alex's carboy of words with himself like if for him it did not weigh a ton. The boy was about to chase the bus, but knowing that it would be pointless, he stood in place observing its dim lights merging with the glitter of the high street. His hand wandered into the cold pocket of his leather jacket, finding the rectangle of a business card. He brushed his numb fingers against the raised, embossed font - Miles had an eye for detail - reading the words "Miles Kane" over and over again. Not Cane, Cain or Caine - the letter "K",  like in the powerful yet meaningless word "Kodak" - was a perfect representation of Miles' personality, so pronounced and flaring. Alex read these two words out loud like a spell, hoping it would bring back his own self he felt suddenly devoid of.

The sensation of loosing himself as soon as the man got out of sight reminded him of something. It felt like love. Like if someone distilled love separating its ingredients and let Alex drink exclusively the dark side of it. It felt like love without loving - a suffering without devotion, unbearable languishment. Or maybe drug addiction would be a better comparison, craving and seeking that ends only in the moment of an absolute burnout. Alex had been addicted to Miles since their first encounter on the Overground train. He eventually turned around and walked home with his senses switched off until he realised he was facing his front door and had to look for his keys. 

Today, he was still in bed in his last night's clothes, with his jacket and boots still on, suspended in time. He reached for the phone and looked at the business card in hesitation. He sometimes struggled even with calling his closest friends, always paranoid that they would be to busy or not in the mood to talk to him - but now he was desperate to hear Miles' voice and have a proof that the man is real, and - what was very important - to find out if he was still eager to keep in touch with Alex, for whom loosing contact equalled death.  
His breath became heavy as he typed the number in, double-checking if it was correct, and he pressed the 'call' button, immediately cursing himself for not having prepared what he wanted to say. His blood rushed to his head when suddenly the ringing stopped and he heard a familiar husky voice on the other side. 

 "Miles speaking, 'ello?"

"H..Hi, it's Alex here, we met last neet..." He stuttered, his voice unwillingly getting very low and guttural in that particular fashion which often would make people accuse him for swagger, while it had always been the only way he could speak under pressure, pushing the words out by force.

"Ah hey laa, nice that ye called, I was wondering if you'd do that! " Miles' voice was relaxed and melodious as ever. "Did yer get home safe?"

"Yeah, though it was quite a long walk, I got me arse nithered, it was fookin' freezin', it was!" Alex exclaimed, relieved that, as always, Miles naturally took control over the conversation.

"True that, well, it's too cold for that sexy jackhet of yers!" The Scouser laughed.

"Said t' man who spent last neet wearing loafers and a fancy blazer" Alex fired back, not aware of a grin growing on his face.

"Well, as yer said, I'm a proper dandy, it's a part of this lifestyle, if y'knowwhatI'msayin'... Anyway, are ye feelin' better today?"

"Aye, sorta..." Alex automatically replied with an obvious lie. Their first phone call felt weird, but he could not put a finger on it until he realised it was because over the phone Miles' voice was never drowned out by his thoughts - he could hear them only when the distance between the two men was not too big. Now it was like talking with a any other person, except that Miles was absolutely unusual. The sonority of his voice insufflated Alex's soul back to his body, making his eyes sparkle like if he got plugged in and animated by the electricity. 

"I just wanted t' say thank you" Alex continued. "I was really low yesterdeh, tha knows, it was really kind of you that ya stayed and talked and stuff..."

"No problem laa, it was nice to meet yer, to meet a fellow... y'know..."

"Yeah..." 

"We should hang sometimes methinks? Are yer busy today?" Miles said chipperly.

Alex's heart pounded heavily when he heard this proposition. He would do anything to meet Miles again, to sink into his life as he needed him like oxygen, but he bit his tongue in order not to exclaim an overly enthusiastic response which could be inappropriate considering they only had met yesterday and Alex had behaved like a stalker before. Overthinking, he did not realise he made a long pause.

"Halo? I'm sorry, it sounded a bit forward, didn't it?"

"You can be as forward as ya want baby cakes" Alex joked to cover his sudden nervousness that almost made him sick. "But yeah, I'd love to see you" He spoke slowly, trying not to sound too eager.  "but I've been jiggered recently yanno, I don't really wanna do much, maybe a coffee or a stroll?"

"The weather's nice today, what about a stroll in Hampstead Parkh? We could go to some cafe or to mine if ye felt tired, play some tunes maybe..."

"Sounds good mate. What time?"

"Up to you."

Alex had to peek at the screen of his phone as it dawned on him that he had no idea what time it was. Long time ago he shadows dancing on the ceiling had yield to the soft rays of sunshine that lit his room, but he could not assess for how long had he been laying here as everything starting from the last night's final picture: Miles smiling in the bus' window - was a blurry soup instead of a linear order of memories.  It turned out to be 11 am. 

"2 o'clock? I should probably eat owt. And do me hair"

"Who's the dandy one here, ey?" Miles giggled teasingly.

"I wouldn't care, but I can't look frumpeh on a walk with an ever overdressed person, right?" 

"How d'you know, ye've seen me only once!" Miles protested, his voice distorted by his laugh.

At this point Alex was laughing his lungs out as well. "I assume that as in yer thoughts you're always ramblin' on about other people clothes and you visit tailors in bloody Piccadily!"

"Fokhin' telepath stalker! I'm gonna wear a fokhin' trackie today!"

"Do you even own one? Did Armani design it for ye?"

"No you git, I've got a boss trackie from fokhin' SportsDirect like a posh kid I am"

"Promise you'll wear it." 

"I promise. 2 o'clock yeah? Text me when you're by Hampstead station. See ye later!"

"In a bit, mate!"

Alex found himself tearing up and with a cramp in his belly caused by how hard he was laughing. His body was in shock as it had not happened to him in months - he ended up breathing heavily in an euphoric state, until a sudden lack of Miles' voice felt like being pushed under water and drowning. The tears of joy turned into tears of fear and longing, and his muscles only trembled hopelessly when he tried to get up from bed. He took a deep breath to calm himself down, removed his clothes leaving them on the floor among the clutter and lumbered into the shower letting the cold water distract his thoughts and ease him up. He added a little more pomade to his now tousled hair and sternly tried to slick them until the gluey comb fell on the floor when his shaky hands refused to cooperate. When did basic everyday actions become barely manageable? Goosebumps spotted his bare skin sprinkled with water - he rubbed it automatically, but actually he did not detect the cold, like if all his nerves had been cut of from his brain, or like if he was a very realistic cyborg. He switched on the radio hoping that music would carry his mind away. He recognised a steady rhythm and a husky vocal pronouncing _I need a fix 'cause I'm going down_ , and his body reacted with a natural urge to sway his hips as he unwound. The harshness of Liverpudlian accent lingering in Lennon's voice reminded him of Miles' chipper hoarseness and a sensation of warmth flooded his body, his mind becoming clearer like if he had consumed a mix of pure glucose and caffeine. Walking around the room, he met his reflection in the full-length mirror, randomly leaning against the wall as he had been too moonstruck to mount it in the hall. His translucent, ghostly silhouette seemed to materialise every time a thought of Miles crossed his mind, painting a delicate smile on his pale face, retouching it with, making it look younger, happier, calmer. He pulled on a black turtleneck and a loose black coat, deciding on a wide grey scarf when he noticed how a blast of wind fiddled with the boughs of a lonely tree outside. Like an actor developing his character, he looked in the mirror and tried different pouts, working on a relaxed face expression. Having chosen a satisfying style, he let it permanently cast on his noble face, varnished by a blow of cold air that hit him when he walked outside.

He popped into a small cafe next door, where a seller greeted him with a cheerful smile as she recognised him. He ordered a panini with vegetarian filling and a cup of tea with milk and took a seat in the corner of the cosy, home-like venue. Absentmindedly, he fixed his gaze somewhere on the other side of the window on which some slogan, neatly calligraphed with a chalk pen, overlapped the image of people walking outside like credits of an old film. The radio was quietly playing one of popular yet fairly alternative stations; Alex started to tap his fingers to one of Sonic Youth tunes, a raw sonority of which was being completed by sounds of the process of his meal being prepared. Suddenly, he froze. The song changed to a lively, summery tune, with a sultry old-school guitar riff. He analysed first few seconds and decided it was well-produced and interesting, until his thoughts stopped immediately when he heard the vocal. This voice was The Voice. Harsh yet slinky, piercing through his ears. Despite his eyes open wide, he did not notice the girl who brought him a tray with his order and was about to hush her when her concerned "Are you okay, sir?" jammed the song. He just wanted to keep listening to Miles singing, he could easily picture the man's thin rose lips moving, his beautiful hands sliding on the instrument's neck. He felt his cheeks heat up and blush when he realised where his thoughts were leading to. 

"Yeah... I'm okay, sorry... Thank you" He muttered after a while, sending the girl not quite convincing smile. 

Randomly, the man behind the counter turned the music up, the stereo sound system giving Alex the impression that Miles is singing just behind him, like if his presence haunted the venue. The lad felt trapped in what he craved so much. He needed Miles now, not traces of him that he could find all over the city. He felt surprisingly jealous when he heard the radio announcer pronounce the spell of the name "Miles Kane", like if he was the only one with a right to ever say it out loud. He shook his head intensely trying to snap out of this irrational state. He took a sip of his tea letting it melt the stiffness of his throat, but the panini on a plate in front of him seemed as edible as a piece of wood. He tried his best though, immediately regretting eating it after he stood up and felt nauseous - as usual, his tensed body tried to reject everything essential like food, sleep or oxygen. He walked out and paced towards the station, with Miles' song still stuck in his head, teasing him, forcing him to walk according to its tempo. Trying to find his travelcard, he removed everything from his pocket and noticed that his phone was flashing, informing him about an unread message. He almost dropped the device, trying to unlock it in excitation.

"Miles Kane 13:26 - I've got some blankets and hot tea in a thermos. Will be there w/in a quarter. I'll wait for u by the station exit"

_God, a thermos! Isn't he the sweetest?_  
"Alex 13:28 I'm on my way now. C U soon" The boy replied quickly, clumsily tapping the screen with his cold fingers and rushed to the station, attracting strangers' attention as he unwillingly started running until he lost his breath. 

Stations had always been a horror for him. The crowd, now not too dense as it was not a rush hour, was always like a herd of sheep that always knew where it was heading to, wearing their samey black coats like if they followed an unwritten uniform policy, a crowd that would give him meaningful looks every time he happened to seem lost, when he had to turn around and go back, when he tripped and dropped his belongings. The crowd that had its own collective knowledge, opinions and places to go. 

He sat down in the carriage and closed his eyes as if it could make him invisible - at least it prevented him from unwanted interaction with fellow passengers. Some artificially sounding recorded voice announced the Northern Line, again evoking Nick Drake's lyrics, _I'm a parasite on this town_... Suddenly, their feminine timbre changed into that undefined, lilting sound of the Voice, informing Alex that _the next station is: Hampstead_. The boy almost jumped on his seat, breathing out in relief when it dawned on him that it was just his sleep-deprived body that had dozed off. He got of the train and nervously looked around to find the glowing "Way out" sign, his boots sliding on the slippery floor as he was almost running towards the exit. He crinkled his eyes as the beams of white British sunlight lit him through the square of the station entrance. But what truly overwhelmed him was a chatter, more distinct than the actual conversations of people around him. It was Miles' overlaying thoughts echoing in the hall. 

Alex run outside to find him standing on the side of the entrance, leaning against the wall, with a mop of his mod hair tousled by the autumn wind; wearing his cheap all-black track suit, a long grey wool coat and classy black boots, looking pretentious yet deliberately funny. When Alex spotted him, Miles was already looking in his direction - he must have also heard the boy's scattered thoughts. He welcomed Alex with a grin so warm that the man felt like if a weigh had been removed from his shoulders. He noticed that in his presence Miles' stream of thoughts became much more narrow and organised, becoming practically parallel to the words he said.

"S'appenin', la?" He exclaimed!

Why did they even have to speak if they could hear each other telepathically? There was something appropriate in the action of talking, like if pronouncing words was the right way to exhibit the meaning as opposed to just letting someone peak at the work in progress. 

"I'm good mate, yourself?" Alex was about to throw himself at Miles and hug him tight, what the other lad had surely noticed as he took a step forward and embraced him friendly, not letting the boy go until his breath became steady again.

"Yeah, sound!" _He smells of hypo-allergic soap and Sweet Georgia Brown pomade. A kind of man that doesn't have to use any perfumes because it would only obscure the naturally sweet scent of his skin_

_He's scrutinising me like Jean-Baptiste from "Perfume"_

"I like this book, indeed" Miles smiled at Alex's thoughts.

"Just don't kill me in t' bushes, please" The boy pushed him away jokingly. "You look great in this trackie, by the way" _Like a mod runner_

_He's so sweet when he wants to offend me but says the opposite_ "There're other things I'd rather do in the bushes"

_So fucking forward as always. He must be gay, right?_

"I meant having a little picnic-"  

_Stop reading my mind, Miles_

"-unless you want more."

_He definitely is gay._

_Well, seems that yer too, Alex_

"I'm just messin' with yer." Miles poked his belly and laughed resonantly when the boy curled himself in response. _Because yer cute when yer ashamed_

"Shall we go?" Alex muttered, his voice getting low and guttural as his body tensed up again. 

"Yeah, this way, laa!" 

And one more time, the echo of their boots marked their presence in the alley as they strolled towards the green peace of the park, not saying a word, looking straight ahead, with their hands occasionally brushing against each other, letting their thoughts chirr in a symphony in the quiet home of London's birds. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear readers,
> 
> so here comes first chapter of a continuation of what I originally intended to be a short story... I hope you enjoyed both this and the previous part and thanks for coming back to my piece!   
> Just to clarify: if I make any of the dialogues (such as the conversation Alex has with Matt over the phone) sound in a way that is not entirely appropriate, I am doing it with full awareness in order to portray a person who is not (or not yet) a part of the LGBT community and therefore might not be totally sensitive to the full range of behaviours or expressions that within this community might appear lowkey problematic. I assure you that none of my characters are homophobic, however at some points the story might align with my experience of navigating myself through the world as a queer person... but you won't see that until later in the fic x


	3. Little Illusion Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the vastness of Alexander's Sea...

"So how's yer day been?" Asked Miles, passing a steaming cup of tea to the man sitting by his side on the cold bench that was still slightly uncomfortable despite the fact that the Scouser had padded it with a large blanket made of thick wool tartan. Waiting for a response, he poured himself a cup and screwed the cap back on his vintage thermos, made of stainless steel with pink Chinese-styled flowers painted on the mint-green enamel. The wind had blown itself out, now only tickling the rare veteran leaves still decorating the old trees like a green confetti after a long gone party of the summertime. 

"I, errm..." Alex started, trying to find right words that would help him avoid the subject of what his state had done to his formerly smooth day-to-day life.  "I 'aven't done much to be 'onest. Had a lil chat with me mate and just stayed in bed until I called ya" 

_I was an atom levitating in an infinite void until I called_ _ya_ _and your voice brought the words back to me_

Unlike when he was waiting by the station, now the activity of Miles' conciousness had shimmered down and became impenetrable for Alex, who could only guess what the other man was thinking. However, he decided it was more likely that the dandy was currently not thinking at all than that he found a way to muffle his inner Voice. For an incredibly long second, Miles steadily fixed his big round eyes at the lad; their brown warmth half-covered by the eyelids that made him look particularly British;

_A bit like Paul McCartney or a mischievous puppy of English_ _Foxhound_ _._ _He's wearing contact lenses. And... eyeliner?_

Miles laughed at this observation.

"Yer so perceptive!" _A_ _Foxhound_ _. I love it_

_If I could, I'd penetrate the pores of your skin and individually meet every cell of your body._   
_Macrophages... You're an_ _erythrocyte_ _, you bring the life. And I'm a virus. Oh stop it_ _Al_ _, he can hear it_

Miles's eyes sparkled for a moment when he tilted his head like a watchful bird, again letting Alex's thoughts sink into him like if his flesh was an absorbent sponge, sipping on them and rearranging them inside himself: collecting colourful tiles of words, gluing them to the structured skeleton of a Rubik's cube and resolving the puzzle with a few decisive twists performed by his beautiful hands. 

"I'm sorreh Miles, don't lissen to that, it's bullshit I can't really control"

"Thoughts are never bullshit Al, especially those one can't control. I'm just a bit worried, that's it, laa..."

_He's worried about me._

Miles reached into a pocket of his coat and gracefully opened a pack of cigarettes, picked one  _Why this one, not for example the one on the right?_  and lit it with an old, slightly scratched silver zippo with an elaborate monogram, protecting the nondurable being of the blueish flame with his cupped hand as the wind decided to attack him and ruin his old-fashioned hair. He looked ahead like if something in the empty park had attracted his attention, then took a drag, deeply inhaling the smoke and slowly letting it out through his nostrils and the narrow slot of his mouth, too lazy or concentrated to use any force and blow it out. He turned his face towards Alex, who for a long time had remained in the same position, and passed him the cigarette, accidentally brushing boy's frozen hand with his fingers, sending a profound sensation of warmth through Alex's body. When the Northerner pulled at the stog, he felt a moisture of Miles' lips still lingering on the filter, and though he was aware it was impossible to feel it, he could not resist the impression that this barely palpable dampness felt sugar-sweet. Exactly like if the cigarette carried a kiss onto his lips.

_I could give him all me cigarettes just to watch him smoking._

Like drops of crimson watercolour accidentally dropped into a glass of milk, Alex's cheeks blushed as he heard this thought.

"Shouldn't you care 'bout me health?" he tittered.

"I should, indeed. But ye need this ciggy to calm yerself down, otherwise bang goes our conversation. And there is a lot to talk about, Aly."

Nervously brushing his hair back with his stiffened hands, Alex smiled awkwardly at the compliment and unexpected seriousness in his companion's voice. Before he placed his hand - pierced by thousands of invisible particles of pure chillness - back in his pocket, Miles grabbed it and locked in a shelter of his now rosy but still pleasingly warm palms. In response to that Alex's heart sped up its pace like a machine struck by a lightening, but Miles kept gentling on his sensitive skin, electrifying invisible hair that made its surface feel like a delicate velvet. 

"First of all, could you do me a favour?" The Scouser asked when his friend regained his composure, finally looking into his eyes. 

"Yes?"

"I understand that it all feels bonkers and you'd probably like to offload to some of yer friends, but for the safety of both of us, yer mustn't tell anyone that we are telepaths. Especially, I need to ask you to never blow the gaff about meself. Okay? Sorry if I make it sound harsh, but this is very important." He said slowly, articulating every word and never blinking, watchful like if he wanted to make sure he would not miss a single glimpse of Alex's reactions.

"Yeah, I figured... I must say... I almost let it slip to Matt, but I realised tha' he'd probably take me out of my 'ouse straight to t' laughin' academy"  _But instead I insinuated I went gay for_ _ya_

Miles giggled at this awkward disclosure, but soon put his earnest mask back on.   
"Aye, that's one of the things that can happen. I don't mean to scare ye Alex, it's just... You've got this talent and you need to be aware of any possible consequences, if y'knowhatimsayin'."

"Normally I would rather not keep in touch with yer" he paused and tightened the grip of his hand, having noticed that Alex held his breath - "Just because it's very dangerous for the two of us, it really is. I'm not gonna elaborate... I mean, ye can imagine..."

"I'm not sure if I know wha' you're talkin' about?" Alex shook his head, his head full of most absurd assumptions. "Like, in my case, I can exclusively read thy mind, wi' other people I'm just a mere mortal, reyt?" 

"I bet a little bit of practice would allow ya to eavesdrop everyone. It's up to ye and to yer conscience actually, like, if and how are yer gonna develop it... But still, even if ye could only hear us, that's enough to possibly get you in trouble. So lissen to uncle Miles and keep this lovely mouth shut. And you'll never have to bother yer 'ead about it." 

"Okay..." Alex muttered, slowly nodding his head in confusion.

"Yeah? Sorry if I sounded like a yob, I just wanted to make it clear..." 

"I mean, it's still not to clear, I'm proper maddled actually,  but..." He stopped for a while, feeling that again his mind was turning into a thick grey cloud that was blocking any ideas from forming. "Miles?"

"Yes?" 

"Why are ya gonna keep in touch then?"

This time it was Miles who broke the eye contact and looked down at their fixedly entwined hands. Alex could feel him desperately trying to keep a tight reign on his thoughts, but a throng of them broke the soundproof barrier he had created and words started leaking from the cracks like if he was a sculpture coping a fountain. Miles widened his eyes helplessly as he could not stop them from being audible and blushed awkwardly when scraps of them left his head:

_Got me here... Yeah, why, any sensible reasons? You just wanna...  ...cutie... and he..._ _Yer_ _kinda responsible now too... And maybe..._

"Good question, Alex. I think I'm not being reasonable here... But errm... I sorta trust ye... And I simply like ye, yer a sweet lad, we could be friends I reckon..." He shook his head too intensely, revealing his nervousness. 

_What do you feel responsible for, Miles?_

The dandy curled the corners of his lips in half-smile, but the circles of his eyes remained deadpan. "Because yer went proper crazy for me, am I wrong?" 

"That's true..." This observation made the Northerner tremble as his cover got blown. "I mean..." He snatched his hand away from the temple of warmth where it was trapped and on his last legs he managed to stop himself from standing up and running away until Miles' would be just a dark figure, like a blotch spoiling the peopleless landscape. A getaway, although so tempting, would only make the stain on his dignity hold to its surface more obstinately, moreover - escaping from Miles would be like an attempt to run a marathon with head tightly wrapped in a plastic bag, like being a comet losing its glare while deflecting from the life-giving flame of the Sun, to the point of turning back into a lifeless meld of stone and ice. So here he stayed, with his eyes of a startled animal that tried to pretend to be dead hoping to save its life. Firmly, Miles grabbed his hand again and pulled him for an embrace. 

"Alex, calm down, please laa." He sighed, the touch of his hands hardly palpable through the layers of his friend's clothes, yet still comforting. "I'm not going anywhere2, okay?" He muttered slowly against the cashmere material of Alex's scarf, interrupted by shivers going through the man's body when he burst in tears. 

_Cry. Cry_ _yer_ _fears out, don't try to stop it... I need_ _yer_ _to learn how to take control over_ _yerself_ _... Cry, babe_

Like an infant who, not knowing any language other than pure sounds and automatic gestures, could only try to express himself both without limits and risking not being understood, Alex helplessly tugged on the folds of Miles' coat and let himself whimper aloud, the bleakness of his sobs being muffled as Miles pulled him closer so the man could snuggle his face in the crook of his comfortably warm, white neck. The trust they put in each other and an odd affection flickering timidly got compressed in the tiny gap between their bodies, until Alex fully pressed himself against his friend's torso in his desperation for proximity, afraid to break the contact like if he was scared that this warm, tobacco-and-cologne scented figure would disappear immediately if he did so. Miles attitude was understanding, yet he remained distant in comparison to the Northern lad's outburst, knowing that what yonder needed was a cold, harsh surface of a rock wall that he could lean on instead of soft, unstabile construction. He could let him cry, but would never cry with him, for Alex's good. Miles let his motionless lips rest on the top of the boy's forehead, in the centre where his hairline met the paleness of his skin, cutting a heart shape out of his face. But what Alex experienced, even though the man did not make a single move, was a sensation of soft, tender kisses drizzling over his cheeks, his eyelids now puffy and covered in salty tears, on the gulf of his jawline that was perfectly hidden in the crinkles of his scarf... Few seconds later, the impression became less distinct and eventually subsided, leaving a feel of cold and emptiness. Whatever Miles had ever given to Alex, yon wanted it to never be taken away. 

As the immaterial kisses vanished from the velvet of Alex's skin, so did the tears and he felt his throat slowly relax in the way that evoked vague memories from his childhood, when he would cry over something that was a big deal exclusively for him, and then fall asleep exhausted by the spasms, screams and sobbing to completely forget about the issue the following day. Miles slowly pulled away, unwillingly letting the white glow from the cloudy sky hit Alex's oversensitive, bloodshot eyes. The man let his greasy hair fall freely and obscure his features, now spoiled by intense weeping. In order to change his position, Miles removed his arm that was wrapped around the smaller lad, but the sudden murkiness that eclipsed Alex's thoughts made him place it back on his shoulder.

"Do you feel better when I touch yer?" He asked, his eyes sucking all the despair and any other emotions out from the crybaby's heart, percolating it through a mysterious filter and giving it back renewed and pure, like if he refined them through a process of life-saving dialysis. 

Alex nodded in response, again breathing slowly and regaining his ability to look straight into his friend's eyes, though not without shame.

"Like, ye can fookhin' eavesdrop my private thoughts, isn't this enough of a connection?" Miles cheerfully tapped Alex's shoulder in attempt to make the atmosphere a bit more relaxed. The boy could not help but laugh in response.

"I... I'm sorry. I'm being a trouble... God, I feel so ashamed of missen now..."

"Don't be. Lissen Alex, I don't know why am I doing that, but I sorta want to _I simply should_   help yer..." _Before your own thoughts will eat you alive_

"Imagine that yer mind is a sea." He continued, his voice pleasantly low and calm. "It's large... It's got its unfathomable depths where incredible monsters live, shoals that look beautiful when observed bird's-eye, but that can be dangerous for large ships... There're coral reefs, a home to thriving life... Many rivers and other seas connected to it, constantly exchanging water, influencing yer... Maybe in the springtime a massive wave of cold water -an effect of a thaw up in the mountains - hits yer with a load of grit and ground scraps of what used to be pine trees... Yer sea perpetually changes, but the name on the map remains constant,  _Alexander's Sea._ "

Alex closed his eyes, letting the pictures appear in his mind as if they were projected straight on the inner side of his eyelids. The sound of his friend's voice was like a damp paintbrush creating half-abstract pictures hinting the idea of beautiful, empty marine landscapes. 

"Yanno how it all works, don't yer. The Moon reigns over the flows and low tides. The wind wrinkles the midnight blue surface... Now imagine that, right in the middle of this sea, there is a tiny little sailing yacht. It's your yacht, Alex."

An impression of a damp, fresh breeze hit Alex's face and he could swear his lips suddenly became chapped and salty, but maybe it was just the tears that had dried up on its rosy surface. The whole world became quiet and the only thing he could hear was a rhythmic rustle - his own heart, or maybe the waves hitting the port of his boat?

"It looks quite lost here, innit? Such a small craft on a high sea, a certain death, right? Well, a single big wave could forever bury it in the cold black abyss..." He tightened a grip on Alex's shoulder when he noticed his uneasiness. "However, you must remember that this is YOUR sea. The sailor behind the steering wheel of the boat is ye, a Poseidon himself. Knowing the apparatus of yer little universe, ye can safely navigate yer tub and the elements won't harm a hair on yer head"

This time a real blow of wind hit their faces, but Alex inhaled the freezing air valiantly, absorbing the power it carried, feeling his chest fill up like a strong sail made of crisp canvas. Ahead there was a vastness, yet it did not scare him as much as it used to do. 

"Now please picture a stour. It shouldn't be hard, because it's already here, am i wrong? Some storms can be occasioned by winds from above foreign waters, but ye have a power to nip it in a bud. The worst ones are caused entirely by yerself even though ye might not be aware of it. So there's a massive one going on now, I've seen it, and now I'll prompt you how to soothe it..."

Even though his eyes remained shut, he felt like if he opened it to see that there's no border between the turbulent sea and the sky as the water was splashing everywhere, the shattered landscape becoming a dark blur suggestive of a fragment of some William Turner's painting. The whiteness of the sails was about to tear apart, so impulsively he rushed to the rigging and grabbed the cables in order to clew them up. He was about to use all his strength to complete the task while the boat rocked relentlessly, being dangerously alist - when in the middle of the splore he heard Miles' calm, firm voice and felt his arm supporting him.

"No." He said - "Yer not giving up, it's not about the sails, it's about the storm, remember? Silence the stour and yer save the yacht"

"How!!" Alex screamed, his eyes widening up in fear. 

"Go back and grab the fookhin' wheel" Miles replied sternly. While Alex's hair was stuck to his wet hair and he was soaked to the skin, his companion looked as crisp as ever, the slaughterous wind only gently ruffling his pretentiously styled hair. It was not his sea. The storm could not affect him.

Obediently, the sailor made his way through the slippery deck and took over the steering wheel, with horror observing the wind tossing the sails and masses of water crashing against the starboard, impatiently waiting for any word of advice from Miles, who now placed his hands on Alex's, loosely embracing him from behind. But instead of helping him control the boat, he let him stand in the middle of pure chaos where he could not escape from the words swirling around him; all the insecurities he had tried to muffle in order to live his day-to-day life were now splashing against his weak body, whizzing right into his ears.

_I'm a nought   I'm a burden   She left me   I would let my fears change my behaviour instead of letting her help me  anxiety knitting an armour of anger  trying to control everyone because I can't control_ _missen_ _I've been repeating that ever since   I've ruined the band   so talented they soon gonna find someone new   probably   I still miss her   but I don't    but   love is still lingering and I'm weak   I'm not gay   I'm never gonna  I will  I    Miles    Miles is gonna leave me like everyone else_

He felt the world whirl faster and faster around him, falbalas of water and wind entwined in the most dangerous tango. All at once, a particularly strong whoosh blasted against their hopeless boat, overturning it like a walnut shell. A flow of ice-cold water wrestled Alex out of Miles' arms, ruthlessly pushing him into depths of inkpot of the sea. The tumult subsided and the only thing he could hear was precious bubbles of air escaping his body like if he was an inflatable toy with a broken valve that someone sat on. He felt dizzy as metres of water pressed on him; spirally, he was falling down with his eyes fixed at the circle of dim light above him until his field of view got blackened out and he completely lost his vision.

Just as his body gave up letting water tear into his lungs, a last desperate wave of adrenaline hit his brain, making his normally intertwined, murky thoughts clear. 

_They haven't left me_   
_They are still here_   
_I'm in power I could as well walk alone_   
_Stand tall_

Something large, smooth and flat hit him from the back and although the cold abyss had made him lose his spatial cognition, he could swear that he was being swayed up by some unidentified strength. His body was losing a battle with an oxygen deprivation and relentless pressure changes, however its alerts remained muted as his mind was busy continuing the complex analysis. He noticed how a most delicate shadow of a thought could affect his position and the pace of his soaring. 

_Because there's no one like me_

Like if his lungs turned into gills, water became to leave his respiratory system, oxygen hitting his brain like a longed-for dose of drugs. His weakened body relaxed, stretching on the unknown smooth shape lifting him towards the low light. 

_Aren't you being a bit of a narcissist, Alex?_

As soon as floating words formed this sentence in his mind, a change in pressure felt like a kick straight in the back of his head. He let out a silent cry and decided that the only way of saving himself was immediate progress in controlling his train of thought. He did his best to open his eyes and focus on the centre of the blurry blue circle of light above him and committed all his attention to breaking links between words that were about to form molecules of depressive ideas and incubating the good ones that were being born. One of them repeated like a chorus, each time increasing the speed of soaring and pumping energy into his flesh. 

_I can turn my every pain into my power_

_You say like if it was so easy_

_Fook_ _you!_

_I CAN turn my every pain into my power_

_I can learn on my failures and turn it into my wisdom_

_It's up to me if what I build for_ _missen_ _is a monument or a guillotine_

_I can turn my every pain into my power_

In what felt like ages, he was getting closer to the black blurry shape of the overturned yacht until he broke through the wrinkled surface of water that had almost become a death of his. The brightness of daylight blinded him at first, and wonderingly he realised that the sky was clear now, beams of sun piercing the fresh, purified air, the horizon dividing it from dark and calm sea.

With loud splashing, he was still raising higher and higher above the surface of water until he could identify what he was laying on. He moved his hands to touch the sturdy yet smooth dark-grey skin from under which a faint warmth was emanating. He looked around ad observed that he was sat on a back of a massive whale towering above the waves. It took him a long while to again adjust himself to an obvious act of breathing, coughing out water that left a prickling sensation in his chest. When he looked down, he spotted Miles - with his clothes neat and dry as always, sitting on the bottom of the overturned boat, spoiling the crisp air with a wisp of smoke of his cigarette while observing steadiness of the straight line of the horizon. 

Alex shut his eyes and exerted his brain, colliding thoughts and turning them into powerful ideas. Within minutes, a group of dolphins surfaced the waves, surrounded the yacht and flipped it back to its normal position like an origami boat, belaying Miles - who seemingly found it quite entertaining - during the process. A smile of victory appeared on Alex's face when he was observing how the nature obeyed to his wishes and he relaxed, gently tapping and stroking the skin of his faithful whale and watching the dolphins jumping around playfully.

A shiver of cold came down Alex's spine and he woke up nuzzled into a lapel of his companion's coat, with Miles' arm protectively wrapped around him. What he first interpreted as sea water dripping from his hair and clothes turned out to be cold English rain that had soaked them to the skin. Miles greeted his friend with a cheerful smile, but got lightly punched in the stomach in response.

"Did ya want t' kill me?!" Alex exclaimed, waking up from his trance.

"Me?! No, why, how? It was purely yer imagination. Yer thoughts are like a read-only file to me, I have no possibility to deliberately change it. " Miles shook his head, chuckling.

"Tha promised to give me a clue and ya were just standing there!"

"I didn't 'ave to, I left it because I knew ye got this. I'm so impressed laa, like, ye got yerself into self-hypnosis and in this state yer managed to meditate without any prompts. And what yer imagined was proper boss, laa yer so amazing!" He ruffled Alex's hair wholeheartedly, his eyes revealing real admiration. "But the whale, Alex. A WHALE." He laughed.

"Oh shut it, I did it subconsciously! It all scared t' shite outta me"

"I'm sorry. I had me finger on the pulse though. If something happened, I would have woken yer up, love" Miles said, tightening the embrace. His soaked fringe was now stuck to his face which blushed because of the cold. Alex gave him a meaningful look.

"You'll get cold... And t' rain ruined thy coat..."

"There're more important things than some coat." He smiled. "But now we should definitely go somewhere dry."

"I feel like goin' 'ome..." Alex sighed, his heart still pounding heavily as he recalled the imaginary yet so real events that he had just gone through.

"Understandable. Let me get ye a cab" With his free hand, Miles pulled out a phone and opened his Uber app, typing Alex's address in even though the boy had never revealed it. "It says three minutes" He said, poking his friend's cheek as despite the pouring rain, exhausted Alex was about to crash out snuggled against Miles' chest.

"Use it next time ye feel overwhelmed. Ye'll learn 'ow to control yerself. And yer words." Miles said when he opened the car's door for the other lad. "And I see y'soon, ey?"

"Aye. In a bit!"

"Tara!"

It was late evening when Alex, surprisingly composed to the point he was about to admit he was happy, put on one of his favourite (so quite torn out) long-plays which he knew so well that it would not distract him too much, and buried himself under the blankets on his settee. Before he even noticed or could control it, words began to escape his mouth, conglomerating into scraps of abstract, poetic sentences. A feeling that he had not experienced in months - afflatus  - now electrified his mind. As there was no pen and paper in an eyeshot, he started to type his concepts straight into his phone that he had in the pocket of his jeans.  The ideas seemed so different when restricted by a regime of black characters on a glowing screen. He decided that now he should just write his stream of consciousness down to edit it later when he would be down from his high of creative excitement, with a sober, critical eye. Struggling with an uncomfortable smartphone keyboard, he typed in a dozen lines of what perhaps could become new lyrics, until he felt that the well of inspiration was empty for today. In order to save the note, he automatically pressed a central button, and to his amusement he noticed that a "Message sent!" notification appeared on the screen. He almost screamed as he realised his awkward mistake and helplessly threw the phone on the carpet in the middle of the room. After a few minutes of laying down with his hands covering his face in shame, he heard the mobile buzz, hence he picked it up immediately. Nervously, he unlocked the screen to meet an obvious "1 unread message from: Miles Kane" notification, on which he tapped impatiently.

All that it said was: "I'll take it as a thank you. Goodnight x"

What Alex knew was that this night would probably be sleepless.

 


	4. Then I started winning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys,
> 
> Here comes another chapter of Telepathy! Please let me know how ya find it,
> 
> A. x

The soft, warm breeze playfully ruffled Alex's hair and he felt a sensation of delicate tingles on the top of his shoulders as well as on his cheeks and nose, where the sun - shining freely like a light bulb in the middle of blue dome of the sky - had reddened his usually porcelain skin. He dipped his hand in the bucket of cold water, grabbed a small herring and lifted it up, its skin flickering in the sunlight. A dolphin that faithfully accompanied the sailor on the side of his boat opened his mouth, looking like if it was smiling, and cheerfully jumped out of water to catch the treat. Alex threw the fish into its maw and grinned happily, going back to the rigging in order to adjust the sails to the change of the wind. Now it was perfect - distending the sails just enough, steadily pushing the yacht towards the ever unreachable horizon. 

_I am the destination of my own journey_

Again, Alex had spent the morning with his eyes stuck on a little crack on the surface of the ceiling, but its whiteness worked as a screen for the blue and golden images of his imagination. There was a thought he aimed to take care of today - when it felt satisfied with his attention, it would become an allied wind obediently filling the white canvas of the sail. He really had to concentrate on it to not let other blows interfere and push the yacht out of the course that he had chosen. There was no specific target of his trip - what he tried to achieve was a basic act of navigating his boat so it would go ahead following a straight line. Maybe one day would he learn how to turn it or adjust its speed to his caprices. For today, keeping the whirlwinds and breakers away and slowly moving straight on across the endless blue was enough of an accomplishment.

 _I am the destination of my own journey_  

A sound of a passing ambulance's siren woke him up from the pleasant trance that made his body relaxed like after a long deep sleep, even though his brain was firing on all cylinders. He rubbed his eyes with his hands that had gotten stiff and cold after what must have been hours of stillness, what made the contrast between them and his heated cheeks even more distinct. As the harsh sunlight on the high sea was imaginary despite how plausible it seemed, the unusual calor must have been a beginning of a fever - which was not unexpected as the clothes that he had worn last night still had not dried up despite being hung right on the top of a radiator, filling the room with a scent of damp wool. 

His vision became blurry and he felt dizzy for a few seconds after he stood up too rapidly. He supported himself against the wall and made his way to the small kitchen, automatically grabbing the well-designed shape of stainless steel kettle and poured some water in, following his not unseen habit of preparing tea as a first thing after waking up. A smell of the strong brew pleasingly irritated his nostrils until he chilled it with a splash of almond milk and took a sip of received mixture, undefined taste of which oscillated between bland sweetness and mild bitterness. Having opened a cupboard above the stove, he found a last blister back of antipyretic drugs and swallowed one pill, hoping it would nip the fever in the bud. 

He grabbed the mug and came back to the room where he sat down on the settee among the shambles of blankets and hesitated whether or not would he like to watch the news. His hand hovered above the remote, but what he grabbed instead was his phone that he had placed right next to it on the wobbly wooden table. Mindlessly, his thumb drew the unlock pattern and his eyes opened wider in response to a familiar envelope icon that appeared on the screen. Miles had texted him over an hour ago.

"Miles Kane 10:23  -  Morning Aly. How's ur whale? x"

Alex choked on his tea and accidentally spit few drops of it on his white t-shirt as he could not contain his laugh. His heart began to beat faster, spreading golden warmth through his body and pushing it into thin vessels of his hands, heating them up again. Almost guilty for his delayed response, he speedily started typing the message, giggles still breaking the rhythm of his breath.

"Me 11:48  -   Stop needling me u dork, I created it subconsciously and yeah, he/she is doing great"

He hit the "send" button and rolled on the settee like an excited child that both feels comfortably and has enough attention on him, freely goofing around. The original reason why had he sat here and what his plans were became immediately forgotten and he could not focus on anything, immersing into ecstasy as he was awaiting a response. If the phone did not display the time, he would never know how long did he lay here with the phone in his hand - like if someone had cut out a boring scene of waiting and glued the bits of film tape back together, creating an illusion that the expectancy was non-existent.

"Miles Kane 11:57 -  I hope ur doing as well as ur sea mammals. Thanks for the poem btw. It made me smile."

_It made him smile_

"Me 11:58  -  It was accidental, I didn't mean to send it to you"

A wave of shame and awkwardness filled him again. He did not as much mind Miles eavesdropping his thoughts as chaos was their nature and, as in case of any other person that was not a guru or a monk, they would easily - especially in its deeper, more subconscious layers - deviate towards most random, often immodest terrains. But now he prematurely let his friend taste yet unfinished sentences which carried ideas and observations not yet veiled by the subtle processes of how Alex would normally deal with poetry - to make it sound less personal and more universal, avoiding what he remembered that someone had called "a teenage girl's secret diary style".

"Miles Kane 11:59  -  Oh fuck u then lol x"

He hesitated when he re-read the message he was about to send, but something prompted him to reveal the truth. 

"Me 11:59 - I mean, I wanted to save it as a note. I did think of you when I was writing it though. But it's unfinished yet, that's it."

"Miles Kane 12:00 -  I can't wait to see the polished version then, this one was boss already. xxx"

"Me 12:00 -  Thank u. And thank u for yesterday. I feel better. x" 

"Miles Kane 12:01 - That's most important, I'm glad. Going to work now, gonna txt u later xxx"

Alex exhaled the air that had seemingly been stuck in his lungs since he received the first message. An irrational flow of calm happiness came down his spine and relaxed every muscle in his body, a tensed state of which used to be so usual to him that such repose felt amusing. Something deep inside him - a translucent, shape-shifting cuttlefish of self-doubt that always managed to camouflage itself no matter whether his thoughts were dark or light like fresh milk, deluding his senses with a thick curtain of black ink - whispered that despite promptly keeping in touch in last three days, Miles in fact did not like Alex that much and would soon cut him off like a needless parasite sucking on his knowledge and energy. However, today he was confident enough to label it as pure nonsense and brush off, feeling that even if it happened, Miles' advice would not lose its validity and that he would manage to live and be strong without his new friend's help.  
He would surely manage to live, he thought. There were worse things that had left scars on his life, some of them still pulsating in pain whenever he would accidentally touch them. Even the wounds that were a fault of his own unleashed thoughts should hurt more than being rejected by a newly met dandy Scouser that he had not even had an opportunity to properly get to know.   
Mindlessly, Alex was going through the content of his phone until he stumbled across last night's mistakenly sent unfinished poem - a spontaneous wreath that he had woven out of the words he picked from the ground that Miles had ploughed and watered. His lips moved delicately as he quietly read it out, trying to follow what the words had to say, who did they want to be their neighbours; he needed to understand their individual personality to know how they would like to be presented - loud and pathetic, or maybe quiet, shimmering, conveying most subtle, intertwined feelings... He had to teach his tongue to dance in the rhythm they imposed, making simple reading out incredibly melodic, hinting veiled meanings. He closed his eyes for a while to put a layer of varnish on the newly created map of words, preserve the feel they carried, their inner melody that he had to respect before turning it into a song. 

Not even bothered to look it up in the contact list, Alex typed in the number that he had carved in his memory and after a few seconds that passed on listening to rhythmic beeping, he heard his best friend's cheerful voice.

"Ey up Al, 'ow do?" Matt asked with enthusiasm.

"Hey Matteh, are you buseh toneet?"

"Not really, was mean't t'go shoppin' with Breana but I'd 'appily say no to that, why?"

"What 'bout t'lads, d'ya know?" Alex replied after a second of cogitation.

"No clue, mate."

"I'll call 'em.. Or maybeh... Could ya contact 'em via Facebook or whateva you use, it might be faster?" 

"Aye, I could." Matt giggled at his friend's persistent ignorance towards any technology that was not strictly related to music. "Somethin's cookin', I see?" 

"I'd like t' meet wi' all of ya, soon." Alex's voice became quieter as he lost his confidence, suddenly considering his decision ill-conceived and premature. "Like, tha knows. Like for a rehearsal."

"For a rehearsal!" Matt exclaimed with both disbelief and relief in his voice. "I'm so glad, tha don't even know 'ow, Alex. I'll call t'guys. Shall we do it at mine? Like, tha'd be t'easiest I reckon, just sit down, 'ave some ale and play with no stress..."

"That sounds good, mate... Thank you."  Alex exhaled, removing anxiety from his body along with used, toxic air.

"I'll get back t'you... In a bit!"

A smile flickered on his face as he comfortably leaned back and rested his head on the settee. He felt that he had just gathered the scattered bricks of what used to be his castle, and could now put them back together to maybe one day again breathe life into it and put up a flag of his strength. But he was aware that it would have never happened without a chain of deceptive coincidences that had gradually rearranged a jigsaw of his life since a particular ride on the Overground.  
He felt that his happiness, his every little victory should be shared with the one who was always standing in the background of his current confidence, who first pushed the ball and caused a chain reaction with all its spectacular explosions. He wanted this only pair of calm, brown eyes -  _like_ _McCartney's_ _or a_ _Foxhound's_  - framed by long eyelashes and a completely unnecessary yet endearing trace of eyeliner - to flash in pride and felicity in response to Alex's tiny though so remarkable achievements. He craved a view of satisfaction on Miles' noble face which would double-up Alex's power and make all his mistakes sink into oblivion like if they were completely insignificant. 

"Me 12:37  -  Miles. If all goes well I'm gonna have a rehearsal with the guys 2nite. Thank you x" He wrote, slightly ashamed as today's messages of his were full of disclosure.

"Miles Kane 12:39  -  What for? :)"

"Me 12:39  -   It wouldn't be possible without your support in last days"  
 _Didn't it sound too formal?_

"Miles Kane 12.46  -   Don't underestimate urself love. Have fun at the rehearsal xxx"

Like if Miles' text was an ultimate validation to a change in his mood, he decided that he will have fun and with such an intention he already put a genuine smile on his face that looked considerably younger and fresher than in last few weeks. After the arrangement had been made and everyone had agreed to meet at seven at Matt's place, Alex committed to common day-to-day activities that he had not realised that had disappeared from his life at an undefined moment in last few months. Now, he could feel that the rainbow variety of glossy fruits on the outside shelves of his closest grocery store actually had a smell; he noticed that his neighbour had decorated her balcony with a rectangular pot of delicate violets, and felt so touched by their triumph over the November ground-frosts that he was about to lean in and warm their frail petals with kisses of his own rosy lips. A simple stew he had prepared tasted better than any ready-made food he had actually barely touched in last few weeks, simply because it was a product of his own hands, what gave it an intangible energy to nourish specifically his body. Folding the blankets and placing dirty clothes in the washing machine, which took him only several minutes, seemed to had cleansed the air in the flat that now looked much more spacious. A smell of washing powder evoked a glimpse of some childhood scene that made him think that his mind must be like a Kings Valley, full of memories that had never lost even a hint of their original colour and were sealed and buried under the sand to one day astonish an explorer. For the first time his apartment, to which he had moved in not too happy circumstances, felt like home, not like a place where the vagabond had stopped to rest before choosing another uncertain track. 

He did not have to wait long until Matt - wearing a peculiar glossy turquoise tracksuit that made Alex internally laugh at a thought that the man looked like a 70's soap comedy star -  opened the door for him and hugged him so rapidly that he pushed the air out of Alex's lungs.

"Bloody 'ell Matthew, you fookin' bear!" He exclaimed, pulling himself out of the drummer's strong embrace.

"Shut your gob, I'm just 'appy to see me bro safe an' sound and goddamn slayin' agin!" Matt slapped his bottom wholeheartedly.

"Slayin' tha says? Wha' does it even mean" Alex laughed and pushed his friend playfully.

"He said tha looks grand you granny, time t' learn some fresh lingo!" Jamie's resonant voice echoed in the hall as he walked over raising his hand in order to give his friend a high-five. First minutes of the band's meetup felt like a time travel back to the sunny days of high school where their friendship mould among endless boyish banter. Alex took off his coat and kicked his boots somewhere in the corner by the door.

"For fook's sake put t'wood in t'hole will you, I'm freezing me arse out here!" They could hear Nick from the kitchen into which they now entered, with a door slam sounding like a gong indicating that the collective was at full strength. 

"Oh aye, while we were waitin' for tha, I was givin' 'im a haircut." Jaime explained why their friend was sat half-naked in the middle of the kitchen surrounded by the curly coils of his hair spread all over the tiles. "He looked like Chewbacca."

"I didn't!" Nick protested, dropping a towel from his shoulders.

"Oi better finish and sweep this muck before Breana comes back!" Matt warned Jamie and opened the fridge to pass a can of beer to Alex, who enjoyed observing the situation from the kitchen's threshold. 

"Or what, would she beat thy arse up?" Jamie laughed, continuing to work on trimming his mate's mop. 

"Watch that gob!"

"I bet she does it in bed, doesn't she?" The man's cheeks got even more red than usual as he began a course of guips.

"Jamie I swear t' god, shut up or you'll find these scissors in yer arsehole!" Matt got agitated, slamming the fridge door suggestively. "And you, stop laughin', you dork!" He turned around and pointed at Alex, who was already tearing up and choking on a foam that splashed onto his face once he opened the can. "I let tha come into me 'ouse and tha betrayed me, tha should side with thy brother!"

"This suits you, by the way." Jamie smirked, pointing the scissors at the white foam that was now dripping from Alex's chin despite his attempt to wipe it off. 

Alex blushed intensely, furrowed his eyebrows and fired back with a smile not leaving his face.   
"Are you horny, Cookie?" he said, coming closer to the blonde lad. "Would tha like me to suck tha off and Breana to beat your arse in the meantime, because that's 'ow it looks like?" 

"Good owd Al is back, boys!" Nick clapped his hands cheerfully. "But seriously, who's the lucky one who brought smile back to this cumly face?"

"Oh, no, no new girlfriends for now, I promise. I still need rest after t'last one." Alex sighed.

"Is it a boyfriend then?" Jamie pierced Alex with his gaze.

"I swear there's no boyfriend either." Alex chuckled, vaguely fiddling with a pull tab of his can that he had suddenly found incredibly interesting.

"LOOK AT THIS SMILEY FACE! HE'S LYING!" Jamie literally jumped and shouted. "Alex I know you, you can't lie to me-"

"Would you shut the fook up and finish me hair because I'm freezing?!" Nick interrupted him and sent him an impatient look. 

"Fook thy hair mate, Alex's got a boyfriend!!" In the background Matt started washing up in order not to completely lose his composure when stuck in his flat with a bunch of screaming peers. 

"Jamie, sorry to disappoint you, like, he's not my boyfriend-" Alex shook his head, fixing his haze on his odd socks. 

"BUT THERE IS A  _HE_ " Jamie did not give up.

Alex sighed. "Matt, like, did'ya tell them anything?"

"I didn't I swear-"

"I see ere's some proper collaboration going on 'ere!" Jamie continued, combing Nick's curls to check if it looked satisfying enough before brushing the cut hair off of his shoulders and letting him put his shirt back on. "What's t'name of this lucky fooker?"

"Erm, it's Miles..." Alex leaned against the wall, still smiling timidly, but seemingly getting nervous.

"Miles who? Please, let us clock him, has tha got a picture?"

"Kane, Miles fookin' Kane, and no, I haven't." 

At this point Matt - who frowned formidably, which made a contrast with his ridiculous outfit -   jumped in, pushing Jamie to the side. 

"Leave him alone, will you? You're being a fookin' brat, tha knows?" He stood on Alex's side like if he was ready to almost physically defend him if it was needed. Nick left the kitchen and soon came back with a dustpan and a phone in his hand, which he reached out to show Alex something that he had found.

"Is that him, Al?" Alex crinkled his eyes to focus his vision on a screen of the smartphone, until he widened them up again at the view of the unmistakable mod fringe and piercing brown eyes of the person posing against a club's wall. 

"Yeah..." He admitted, staring at the picture for maybe a bit too long as even this imperfect representation -  like a holy ikon - emitted a strange power that would give Alex a weapon to push any unwanted thoughts back to where they came before they could cannonade his fragile mind. He did not notice how mindlessly his lips curled into a gentle smile when he looked into the eyes that on the screen were of a size of pinheads, however he could easily imagine their stable, deep brownness protected by a pair of barely visible, blueish contact lenses. 

"Al, like... You're so in love." Nick tapped his shoulder gently, unwillingly waking him up from daydreaming he had sunk in. Alex blinked absentmindedly and let the sentence echo in the back of his mind before he understood its meaning. Until now, a word "love" had barely crossed his mind in relation to what he felt towards the mysterious young gentleman; it was an irrational craze, it was a sick addiction growing in power to maybe one day suck the life out of him - but he would not dare to use this extremely overused yet still, most powerful of all the words to describe such a casual acquaintance. But whatever was the actual disease that troubled his soul, the symptoms seemed to be the same. He behaved and even felt like if he was in love, oscillating between wistful happiness and paralysing longing, subordinating his very basic everyday actions to a flickering mirage - he longed for a being woven out of thoughts as the person on which they were based remained undiscovered. 

"Yeah, maybe you're reyt, I dunno..." He eventually muttered in response with an absent smile variegating his pensive face. "Anyway, I wanted t'maybeh continue workin' on that thing we, I mean, I gave up on... I think I might 'ave some new lyrics to, but I'm not too sure about it yet, we'll see how it goes."

"Al, like, don't worry too much about it. We can just as well sit down and play some Bowie and Strokes, and maybe try some new stuff if we feel like it... We're just 'appy that... That you're back, mate, that's it." Jamie said, stiltedly focused on sweeping the floor to disguise how glazed had his look became. Alex sipped on his beer brushing his hair back with his fingers, his silence being both an agreement to what his friend said and a mask covering his own emotions. An irrational monster of fear that all the people he could not imagine his life without would get tired of him and live him alone was now squirming in flames kindled by an invincibly strong friendship that bound the quartet together.

It was there - in the cluttered cathedral of Matt's basement where they had sat among the entanglement of cables - where for the first time in long months of thirst he had felt the music truly flowing though him. It was like finally finding someone to share a conversation in his almost forgotten mother tongue - he let the sounds carry all the messages that speech could never convey, closing his eyes to cut off all the unnecessary impulses. The tune was like blood pumped through the words to give them new life, to let them grow, become independent and collect different meanings - become so magnificent and so distant from the original, imperfect concept, that he would barely recognise them. When they ecstasy was slowly leaving their bodies and they decided to take a break to have some more beers and chat for a while, Alex sat down and fondled the strings of his favourite acoustic guitar, allowing the words of still unfinished poem chose the tones they would like to be carried by.

"Is that fresh, Aly?" Nick asked, having noticed his friend's unusual concentration that only occurred only when he was excogitating new ideas.

"Yeah, ermmm... I wrote it yesterday, haven't thought of a melody yet..."

"Give it a go?" Jamie encouraged him, grabbing his own instrument and turning the volume down so it would not drown out Alex's unsure vocal.

"O'reyt..." He started, keeping his gaze steadily fixed above everyone like if he was singing to some impalpable being visible only to him. The words were like balloons that he had pumped with everything that was too big to remain crowded inside him - with the whirlwind of inconsistent emotions, with the impression of a journey through the clear vastness of his sea, with the depth of the calmness that could happen only when he forgot himself in the gems of endless brownness. As he recalled the pictures making certain of their veracity, his voice became stronger. He respected the words and their needs, but he was their master. Now he took control over them, using them as a horn to announce the arrival of the parade of his feelings.  
Suddenly, Jamie's guitar joined him with its warm twanging, filling the gaps where his voice had nothing to say, adding a contrasting thread to the material of the song. He smiled at the natural cooperation that did not need any previous arrangements; in the language of sounds, he felt understood and appreciated. It was the closest thing to telepathy.

The air was cold and crisp in the morning when Alex was sitting in a square of sunlight that flickered in the golden decorations of Byzantine-spiced interior of Westminster Cathedral. Having decided against spending another day at home where so many things could distract him from meditation, he had chosen to to let his thoughts blend with an incense smoke dancing in the sunbeams while the priest was singing in the noble language that Latin was, as though he was a comer from a well-preserved, bygone era. The familiar melodies of the mass were a stable base on which he placed his thoughts to cleanse and organise them; he had to obey to the unwritten rules of what was appropriate inside a sacred place, which made it much easier to concentrate them into a single, bright beam of light. He turned his eyes towards the firm yet delicate vaults, thanks to which the force was spread evenly on the walls, allowing the building to grow tall and spacious. An uncontrolled image flashed in his mind: he was a pillar supporting a crescent of a Roman vault. He looked to the left to notice that what made the construction stabile was Miles, who carried the weight of the vault with a gentle smile on his face. 

The sun was still shining surprisingly brightly when Alex left the church, however the consequence of such a clear, dry weather was the air nipping the man's ruddy cheeks. With his mind so incredibly peaceful and joyful, he was making his way through the buzzing chaos trapped in the grid of the streets of London, when unexpectedly, a familiar Voice pierced the hubbub and reached the ears of his mind. It was Miles reading what must have been the headline of today's paper as Alex could swear he recognised the slogan from somewhere. However, his inner dialogue soon fell calm and Alex could only barely hear traces of his thoughts that revealed his existence among hundreds of people in the busy streets. The Northerner turned around to localise the source of the Voice, and eventually spotted the man - dressed in white jeans, beige coat with wide lapels and his slim black boots - sitting alone by one of the outside tables at some trendy crowded cafe. Alex was about to cross the street in order to greet his friend, when some impression inside him prompted him to stay away. With his senses being so sensitive when it came to detecting Miles and reading his mind, he could tell that the dandy was trying to blend in - and pulled it off, however Alex, who had spend weeks searching for the mysterious mod lad, was brighter than the people around. Despite having his eyes moving like if he was reading, it was clear that he was completely not focused on the text. The cafe, full of posh-wannabes and rich tourists, must have been a torture for him - he had once mentioned that he would rather walk an extra mile in the maze of the streets just to find some place with an actual charm, or just have a takeaway coffee that he could later drink in the park, than spend a quarter in a place of this sort. Alex crinkled his eyes while analysing the unusual situation, eventually noticing what might have been an object of Miles' attention. There was a man in his fifties, wearing a seemingly expensive yet not well-fitting navy suit that could not mask his visible beer belly, despite which he still looked fairly classy - not different from a crowd of samey English gentlemen who could be seen all across Central London, especially in the afternoons when they would always storm the pubs to have a few pints after work. He was fiddling with a pack of cigarettes while talking on his phone, sitting on the opposite end of the area to where Miles had his table. How was it possible that Miles had not yet noticed Alex observing him and thinking about him? A minute later, the gentleman finished his phone call, buckled up his bag and walked away in the direction of the station. Soon after that, Miles' thoughts rustled again with scattered song lyrics and - what Alex always found endearing - his typical little complaints about the people surrounding him. He played with the long streaks of hair that curled on the sides of his face and folded up the newspaper, after which he turned his face to Alex, smirked and blinked to him playfully.  
 ****  
  



	5. Policy Of Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long-awaited Miles-centric chapter. The man hides a mystery; he is woven of mysteries, really...

****

A sign of relief flickered on Miles' face when he got up from his seat outside of the cafe - which was now being stormed by a wealthy family of tourists - and gracefully dodged passing cars when he tried to cross the street, too impatient and nonchalant to wait for the traffic lights to change; with the skirts of his unbuttoned coat fluttering in the wind, he resembled a slim, elegant wagtail jumping on the dark grey asphalt. He approached Alex - who was standing on the other side, observing his actions with both a dreamy grin and a hint of worry on his ruddy face - and opened his arms for a hug.

"Thanks god me prince is 'ere to save me!" The man laughed and companionably tapped Alex's back when they got close in a short-lasting embrace - which was more than enough for a greeting, but felt like a stingy teasing that could not satisfy a longing body.

"From wha? What ya doin' 'ere?" _Why do you spend time in a place you obviously hate,_ _watchfully_ _observing some old_ _posho_ _?_ Alex shook his head to express his disbelief. "Didn't t'tourists eat you alive?"

"They almost did actually" Miles chuckled, his eyes never disconnecting from the gaze of his friend, who was so thirsty to dive in their caramel sweetness - letting him taste them slowly. "I was supposed to meet someone here, but they are already half an hour late, and I'm defo not stayin' 'ere any longer."  
Miles's thoughts -  which naturally were like rapid explosions of overlaying colours whenever he seemed to feel comfortable and did not care if someone could decode their content - were now protected by a thick wall of cold solid stone, from behind which Alex could not hear even a shortest snippet. It was enough for him to assume that at the moment he was not welcome in his friend's mind; that currently, despite a playful smile on his face, he was really dedicated to concealing whatever was truly in his head, presenting a painted curtain of fabricated thoughts that was meant to deceive Alex, who could assume that the man was either ashamed or simply lying.  
"And yerself?" Miles continued, his face expression changing faintly as he noticed Alex's concerns, but not enough to break the blithe character. "What took yer rebellious soul to Westminster? Yanno that I can report yer for constantly stalkin' me?" He said facetiously. 

 "I'm not stalkin' ya!" Alex faked being indignant at this remark, however he could not stop his face from behaving like a mirror repeating Miles' every grin.  "I was goin' back 'ome from t'Cathedral, I went for a Latin mass to errm meditate, if you like..."

"I'm just kiddin'. I knew ye're there." Miles winked at him meaningfully.

"Oh, so was it tha stalkin' me then?" Alex seemed truly confused, losing the game - once he forgot about Scouser's suspicious behaviour, the stone wall crumbled, releasing a warm waterfall of Miles' standard observations and uninhibited, often quite silly, remarks. 

"No darlin', I'm not the creeper one here" Miles burst into sincere laughter. "Maybe it's destiny constantly making us go to the same places? I could hear yer when I was havin' a stroll nearby the Cathedral. Yer thoughts are fokhin' loud, yanno?"

Alex tilted his head and looked away as they mindlessly walked down the street in a silent agreement as to choosing the direction, wandering off from the crowded areas. He tried to recall the proceedings of his little meditation session and in retrospection he noticed how the interior of the soaring church became a concert hall for his thoughts, making the words bounce off the blue and gold of the walls to finally come back to him replicated and distorted by the echo. As the limit that the ceiling had been so outlying, the thoughts could float freely and raise in power, sing with each other's harmony that was gradually becoming clearer as Alex reduced their amount, leaving only the most necessary voices.

"But it's a compliment. Ye hold a great power here, Aly." Miles smiled, flicking his fingers against his friend's temple. "It's kind of like talkin' or singin', I suppose... Yer just need to learn when it's appropriate to scream, and when ye should only whisper, y'kno-wha-I'm-sayin'?" Practically predicting Alex's caprice, even before his empty stomach let out a desperate sound, Miles pulled the shorter boy into the dim, mint-green _Is the calm yet exotic shade of mint-green his recent theme colour?_  interior of a small Thai restaurant hid in the corner of the street, where only a few people were sat by the counter cluttered with tacky golden bibelots, busy consuming they noodles in silence. This must have been another of Miles' secret spots; his ability to intuitively find such cozy, oasis-like places in the incessant bedlam of London seemed to be another of his useful talents. 

"How did you know-" Alex exclaimed, inhaling the aromatic steam dancing in the venue. Miles chuckled in response.

"There was a time when I had to take care of me pregnant friend. Predicting yer food choices is like a walk in a park in comparison."

"Was it you who got 'er pregnant?" The other man raised his eyebrow while he kept reading the menu scribbled on a chalkboard. 

"NO! Can yer imagine?!" Miles covered his mouth and bent rapidly, trying to tame a laughter attack.

"Shame. A lil mod bairn on thy lap, wearing a matching designer suit with a tie and a handkerchief all the full gear, would make an ultimate women-magnet." Alex winked with a mischievous smile.

_Is he testing the waters?_

"Will yer ever stop mockin' me style, ye teddy boy biker?" He pushed the giggling boy back as he approached the counter and ordered two portions of stir-fry noodles with tofu before Alex could even verbally confirm his decision. "Also, ye yerself make a much better magnet. Goin' down as gay is the best trick to get birds' attention. Please, keep stalkin' me and go with me everywhere!"

"You are disgusting." Alex shook his head and poked his stomach with a chopstick as they took a seat in the corner of the room, where mint-green yielded to red glow of a lantern made of translucent tissue paper decorated with hand-painted simplified landscapes. He pick a little flacon with a colourful label and opened it to smell its unknown spicy content, however making his olfaction busy could not help the thoughts, one after another, getting away from his mind.

   _I can't believe he isn't..._

When he raised his eyes, his gaze interlocked with a stream of warmth emanating from the circles of Miles' eyes. Although it could not diminish their power, the way they were half eclipsed by his long eyelashes and the view of thin lines of red staining their corners were enough for Alex to break through this carnival mask: always cheerful and steady, impeccably dressed, scented with what must have been a measured amount of cologne. There was a pulsating life under a porcelain shell of a painted dandy figurine that he was - and this life was now eager for a source energy as more than he could now generate or gain was escaping his body through the eyes.

"Of course you can't believe, because I actually am gay." Miles made his mask smile softly, removing his his coat and hanging it on the back of his chair. "So walkin' around the town with such a sexy teddy boy kitten by me side only reduces my chances for a hook-up" He smirked, observing the change in Alex's face. "Fortunately I'm not too interested in such things anymore." 

A short waitress wearing an uniform matching the shade of the venue's walls placed the square steaming plates on their table, for which Miles thanked her with his husky yet gentle voice. He then unhurriedly picked the chopsticks and fiddled with them between his incredibly long fingers before he dipped them in the dish. Alex, whose body suddenly cut off any impulses of hunger, followed his every move with the look of his observant, big sloe eyes. 

"Miles, are you o'reyt?"

"I'm not really, not gonna lie to yer 'cause ye can easily tell, innit, yer a smart cookie" In seconds, Miles' warm gaze condensed to the point it hurt Alex's eyes like a laser beam pointed directly at him. "I'm just so fokhin' knackered Alex, I'm looking forward to my holidays..."

Alex resisted the gaze -  which seemed to be a deliberate attempt to test if he would still like to continue the conversation - and never broke the eye contact, now his own brownness shining brightly; it's powerful beams moved the gears in the clockwork of Miles' mind, finally making him stutter out what was on his mind.

"It's like... Sometimes I just wanna hide, yanno? I'm always right in the middle of this ant's nest, and they all have their fokhin' screamin' minds, and they all sting, and I'm no different, I'm just this dandy ant among a million other ants, if ye will..." He looked down into his plate and squeezed a piece of tofu between the tips of his chopsticks. "The dream would be to escape to like a cabin in the woods... But on the other hand I love London, I actually love people, and I simply can't do that... I just... It just leaves me with a relentless headache..."

When Alex close his eyes, he got overwhelmed by an impression of innumerous thread-thin legs creating crawly paths in the barely visible forest of tiny hairs covering his body, leaving him paralysed as he figured that a slightest move would cause an outburst of accumulated wrath. The army clothed in microscopic red armours was gradually taking over sectors of his skin, covering it tightly from his feet up to his neck. He shut his mouth and eyes not convinced if it would be any obstacle for this force trying to eat him alive. The ants crowded into his ears blocking them entirely - and in the moment he completely lost his hearing, the sounds approached him from what seemed to be another dimension. As though he changed a model of headphones, he perceived the voices in a slightly different way to which he had to adjust. Soon he realised what was the reason of this unusual issue: it was not his senses. He was listening to the world through the ears of Miles Kane.   
The density of sounds hit him like a shock wave of a passing jet. An image of a man having his way with his wife named Maria - which must have been what the customer at the counter was now thinking about - torn into his head with full intensity of colours like an unexpected pop-up window from a porn webpage he never wanted to visit. He could hear the Thai waitress loudly counting the coins in her language, even though she did not say a word. Someone at the bus stop on the other side of the street was worried if they had enough money on their travelcard and was considering the possibility of dodging the driver, at the same time trying to memorise the shopping list. The thoughts of people in the offices above the restaurant melted into a loud rustle, in which from time to time some particular ideas seemed more vibrant and therefore audible; somewhere in the background of it all there was a murky layer of paranoia that the man could not comprehend. Furthermore, Alex could hear Miles hearing him perceive the word through Miles' senses, which created a deafening feedback that almost made him scream in pain until he felt someone shaking his arms intensely, brushing all the ants off.

"Alex!" Miles' eyes were wide in fear when he tried to wake his friend up from a hypnotic state he fell in for a few seconds, which was enough to turn it into a truly terrifying experience.   
Alex tried to catch his breath, grabbing Miles' hand like an anchor, as he knew he could easily drift off again. Someone by the table on the other side of the room gave the pair a concerned look, in response to which Miles muttered some short fabricated explanation about epilepsy. 

"Alex, why did yer... I'm so sorry, oh god..." He stroked the other man's shaking hand in attempt to calm him down.

"I dunno, I... I wanted to help... Or at least understand... I only closed me eyes, it escalated..." He shook his head, hiding his face under the falling streaks.

"I know, because yer so sweet and yer always trynna 'elp... Just... Please don't do that ever again... Like... congratulations, yer managed to literally get into me mind... But yer not allowed to, I don't want yer to, is that clear?" He said with voice both worried and stern.

"I'm sorry, Miles... I didn't mean to..." Alex looked down in honest abashment.

" 's okay, laa..." The man assured him, restively pulling on a streak of his own hair. Like a barely discernible transmutation of the density of the clouds and speed of the wind that makes one shiver in cold before they notice it, something changed  in Miles' otherwise footloose attitude. Under the thick make-up of his natural courtesy and serenity, his mind edged away from Alex's as he tried to protect what was left of his privacy. Miles' body was still here, yet he let his thoughts felt distant, muffled by insecurity and what might have been interpreted as fear. Maybe he was simply trying to protect his companion from further unwholesome experiences that would definitely occur if he could implicitly explore Miles's mind - or maybe the dandy decided he could not anymore trust the person that, without even being aware of the power of his unexplored possibilities, had turned out to be talented enough to probe the Dantean image of the world that Miles' senses perceived. Alex, surprised by the sudden distance, intuitively pulled away and leaned against the back of his chair, gripping the bamboo chopsticks tight as though they were the only part of reality that he could rely on. His eyes were clearly deceiving him - although Miles was sat just on the other side of the small table, he seemed to be swirling straight into the void where he would be safe, away from Alex and all the ants.

"Miles... I promise not to do tha' again... 't was accidental, I'm not sure if I'm even able to repeat it..." Alex stuttered, feeling like if he was stuck in the machine that would cut his head off if Miles took one more step back from him.

"I kno..." Miles muttered mindlessly.

"I don't know why d'ya feel so insecure... But believe me, I would do you no harm..."  _Please, trust me. Please, trust me._

 "I'm sorry, Alex. Yer right... I just became so paranoid..."  _But what if..._  Miles shook his head disappointingly when he considered his own behaviour that must have been very confusing for his innocent-minded friend. 

_Please, trust me._

As much as he could analyse the situation without revealing unnecessary details to Alex and any random telepaths that could happen to be walking around the busy City of London, Miles came to the conclusion that the chances are that Alex's talent was natural and rough, therefore it would not even cross the boy's mind to use it against his mate as well as Alex was still unable to control his thoughts well enough to hide lies and dark intentions. Trying to brush off a thought that one day he would regret such recklessness, Miles followed his intuition and decided that this acquaintance should not give him a hard time, that he was safe with Alex - hoping that his beautiful, dark sloe eyes were not deluding him. 

"Miles?" Alex brushed back unmanageable streaks of his overgrown hair that would always fall on his face no matter how much pomade had been used to style them.

"Yeah?"

"Say 'Alex, I can't count the cockroaches by the cataract of catharsis'" He asked with a dinky smile, tilting his head. Miles' face lit up as the reason of the pun dawned on him.

"Ye git!!" He exclaimed with a wide grin. "Alehhs, I khan't khount de khohhroachesh by de khatarahht of khatharsish" Miles declaimed slowly, even exaggerating the accent that remained untouched even after years of living in the capital, spicing his elegant persona. 

Miles knew what was the only reason why his - now giggling - friend had dived into his collection in order to find this absurd set of words full of "k" sound, and he had to admit that Alex pulled it off. His thoughts came back to their natural state of being overloaded with colours and lights like a street in Chinatown decorated for holidays; some of them were flying high above their heads like beautiful kites he could easily control. The spider of paranoia curled up and hid back into its lodge somewhere in the back of his mind.  _Ye wanton elf!_  His own relaxation reflected in Alex's countenance, which again became soft and juvenile, with the red glow of the lantern playing on his features, making his face look like a fragment from an expressionist painting.

The lunchtime ended and the boulevard by the riverbank emptied slightly. Unhurriedly, they were walking eastwards, their hair being ruffled by the wind cutting through the grey air of what would soon begin to turn into an evening. The water below was swelled and murky, wrinkled by the blows and its own power; a glimpse of a thought that if he jumped down, the river would swallow him in seconds, flew across Alex's mind sending cold shivers through his body, to which Miles responded with a comforting look.

"So... I never really asked..." Alex started, taking his time with picking right words that would form a specific question. "Is it common? I mean... Telepathic abilities."

Miles lifted his head quite rapidly, what the other man interpreted as being hesitant if he should talk about it at this particular time and place.

"Errmm... Yeah, I'd say, it's normal? Like, I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that everyone has it, usually in an undeveloped stage... That's what they mostly call intuition, methinks. It's like dancing... I mean, some are just really talented, some spend a lifetime learning the basics, but the fact is that most of people have two legs and so on, and could achieve a certain level of skills through practice, if y'kno wha' I'm sayin'..."

Alex nodded, listening studiously like a diligent student.

"But imagine what a horrible place the world would be if everyone could listen to each other's thoughts with no limits... Like an Orwell's scenario, but everyone is a Big Brother, and there's nowhere to hide... No privacy, yanno..."

"Yeah... But... It would be sorta utopian... A world where a lie is an impossibility..." Alex wondered.

"Ye don't want it." Miles snapped.  "Ye wouldn't survive a day without little lies. Maybe they're wrong, but the fact is that they get us through life. No one is honest... We'd all kill each other if we were."

"I promise I won't kill you if even though I probably hear more than you'd like me to" Alex smiled, yet the expression soon left his face after he noticed how dark was the aura surrounding Miles. His thoughts got soaked by doubt and vacillation, and the inner fight projected on his eyes that suddenly lost their shine.

"Yeah... Yanno, that's why I'm thinking... I'm sorry Alex, as much as I think yer captivating and so interesting... One part of us really wants to be yer friend... But the other one is protective and... I think that getting too close with another proper telepath is a precarious move..."  
 _Teaching you how to have a way with thoughts might have been feeding a lion..._

Alex felt like if along with losing his composure, the elements got unleashed and pushed on a slim frame of his body, pushing him closer and closer towards the railings; he was almost expecting a stronger blow to throw him above them straight into the whirling greyness of Thames, which looked like a depiction of sorrow that fell on him without any warning.

"Miles, I told ya..." Alex stuttered, opening his eyes wide as he tried to find any reasoning that would save him from a disaster that losing Miles, his Miles, would be. "I don't know what are you so scared of, but I wouldn't hurt ya... I could try to help you with whatever tha struggles with..."

_He knows too much already, he can tell that I..._

"I'm not scared of anything-" Miles thoughts fell silent for a short while, even though Alex did not try to access them

_You're lying, Miles_

 "It's just... I already put so much effort into protecting me mind..."  
 _And I engage into helping yer even though I don't know yer, I'm not a therapist, but something makes me do that_  
 _I feel that I need to though I shouldn't_  
 _It's the magnetism that makes yer so dangerous_

"But you don't have to! Why won't you trust me? It's not like I WANNA hear it, okay? I'd rather switch it off and follow a normal way of getting to know a person..." Unwanted, helpless tears filled his eyes as he felt defeated - he started to believe Miles' arguments more than his own and he was prematurely filled with overwhelming grief.

_It's the magnetism I can't control, and I'm just too used to controlling things_   
_Magnetism_   
_I know I won't escape yer so I might as well stop trying_

It was Miles this time who stopped, sat on a nearest bench and hid his face in hands as he was about to burst in tears. The apprehension gnawed at him; he wanted to build a citadel around himself, where he would never hear Alex or any other people standing on the other side of the thick walls. But there was another force pushing him in different direction - an unbounded, pure, humane desire to cross his thoughts with someone who thought alike, who could understand, who did not need explanations. With a loud twang, his armour fell down and hit the floor when accidentally he dug out a long forgotten feeling that he had associated with the past: with being weak and immature. Yes, he was a respected person, always welcome in any circles he was in, and and a lot of people genuinely adored or even copied him; he had always been an individualist and being an only child, he had never had anything against spending time by himself and would usually use it productively. But now, having Alex around, and being about to reject this beautiful yet unwanted gift, it dawned on him that he was being eaten by loneliness. It was an unusual feeling that he would usually nip in the bud, curing his need to spend time with people by attending any of the parties he knew about, or simply enjoying being a part of the buzzing crowd. However, to his amusement, the intervals between - mostly random - meetings with the Northerner that had come to his life from nowhere, were filled with irrational anticipation and longing. It was not a longing for mere interacting with people. It was Alex himself that Miles missed.  
The grey wood of the bench shook delicately as Alex sat down next to him and hesitantly wrapped his arm around Miles. His own tears stopped as he tried to gentle his companion, whose outburst seemed so uncommon for a person that had previously helped him and seemed to always be in control.

"Miles... You're having a bad day... Don't mek such decisions today, please."  
 _Don't hurt me_

"Yer right... I'm sorry... Yer see, I'm not made of stone..." The Mod replied, rubbing his eyes intensely.

"I never thought tha was." Alex tightened his grip on Miles' shoulder. In such position they remained silent for a few minutes, paying no attention to passing strangers and cyclists, until Miles decided to change the atmosphere by starting a new conversation.

"Yer didn't tell us how was de rehearsal yestiddy?" He asked, turning his slightly bloodshot albeit much calmer eyes towards the caring boy.

"Ah, aye... It was very good I must say... We haven't properly played together in maybe a year, tha knows... It was nice t'go back to something I had to abandon, but what I truly missed..."

"Why did yer ever stop? I thought that music was yer language?" Miles furrowed his eyebrows worriedly, trying not to sound too nosy when he asked this question.

"I just couldn't..." Alex started slowly. "There was a time... I started t'feel worse... Then, there was my latest breakup, over a year ago... When it happened, I felt I had no one to try for, so it all went south... First I couldn't play, then I couldn't speak..."  
 _And then I found you_

Miles nodded understandingly. 

"The thingy I send you by mistake was a first thing I've written since t' beginning of last year, I think..." A tentative smile appeared on his lips. "Yanno, Jamie 'ad an idea... I was quite tipseh so I agreed, and now there's sorta no way back... We're gonna 'ave a lil come-back gig... Like a secret one, y'knowha'Imean? Only for friends and whoever happens to be in the venue at the time. I... I would be pleased if you could come, Miles."

"Oh wow. Thank yer... I'm proud of yer, yanno? That's really good news, like. When is it?"

"The following Thursday, in some pub in Camden..."

"Fookh. I think I was supposed to stay in de Wirral until Sundee..." He was mentally going through his calendar. "But don't worry laa, I'm only visiting our mam and some mates there. It can be rearranged." He smiled reassuringly. "I would never miss yer come-back gig, Aly."

"Thank you..." Alex closed his eyes and let the soft blow cool down his red cheeks. The dandy followed him, exposing his face to the rare view that a sunbeam in November was.

"It means I'm probably gonna leave overmorrow..." Miles continued his previous calculations. "There's one thing I should show yer before I go, just in case."

Alex looked deep into his friend's eyes. "I'm all ears."

"After hearin' yer in the Cathedral I thought that yer need to learn how to disappear." He started, lighting up his last cigarette. "This is important for yer safety as a telepath, Alex. Sometimes it's just wiser not to reveal that you've got skills of this sort..." He accented the importance of this advice with a steadfast look. " So imagine that yer yacht is now a submarine..."

Alex closed his eyes and imagined a claustrophobic interior of the mechanical whale, where the only sound was the buzzing of dim, greenish fluorescent lights and the muffled noise of a running turbine. He was alone in the maze of pipes and unknown devices, and in the cramped space he could hear his own heartbeat spoiling the silence. Suddenly, an extremely loud and unpleasant noise banged against the steel wall of the craft and pierced his own body making him cover his ears in pain. Few seconds later, the sound repeated with its strength slightly increased. The man realised that he's being tracked with a sonar. 

"Don't worry Alex, it's only me detecting yer. I can both hear yer with a passive sonar and define yer position with de active one... Yer goal is to disappear from me devices." 

As quiet as he could - although his every step echoed in the grey-painted tin can of the submarine - Alex came back to the bridge, where the dashboard clocks were bombing him with unintelligible information. The green-glowing radar screen was showing his enemy represented by a moving dot of a great ship following him on the surface. He took a deep breath and exhaled the air slowly, scared that even this hissing sound coming from his chapped lips would be audible. He picked a single thought that he could focus on - an image of a curve that he wanted his craft to follow in order to get away from Miles' coverage. The relentless noise - completely dissimilar to the fabricated movie beeping - seemed to distort a rhythm of his heart and press on his brain through his strained ears. Paradoxically, the unbearable sound - through cutting off his senses - helped him drive disturbing thoughts away and focus on making his power run through the complex machinery. He had an impression that the nerves from his fingertips extended to the outer surface of the submarine, enabling him to feel the currents of cold water flowing against it. Soon, he managed to turn the craft so it was now slowly moving in a desirable direction, away from the source of the sonar sound - what was indicated by the numbers changing rapidly on the control clocks.  
When the direction stopped being a problem, Alex focused on camouflage. He sat down as comfortably as it was possible in the narrow space filled with sticky air, closed his eyes, and focused on the darkness under his eyelids. Psychedelic colours began to flash against the black background - he saw some overlapping distorted images like eyes of his father or glimpses of what he was doing today - which made the experience similar to first stages of falling asleep. He looked deeper into the black ignoring the pictures, and soon, before he noticed, the surroundings vanished and he felt suspended in the void, his thoughts non-existent, but without loosing a primary certainty of his own subsisting. After a while, he got distracted by a mere cramp in his leg - but when he opened his eyes, the sonar sound was already inaudible, and the frightening dot disappeared from the round screen of the radar. He escaped.

"Well done" Miles clapped his hands softly, his rings clicking against the metal lighter he was still holding. Alex opened his real eyes and looked at him with a smile, raising his eyebrow playfully.

"You like it, don't ya? Stressing me out?" 

"It's just a little exercise, Aly. And it's purely your imagination that makes it that scary."

"Okay, okay. Thank you. I'll use it next time if you or some other crazy telepath was trying to chase me" He joked and tried once again, this time without the prompts that the imaginary sea situation was - he fixed his gaze on a random spot on the other side of the river and let his thoughts quieten. He had to admit that once he learned how to do that, the achieved state was making him deeply relaxed.

"Oh god, don't even joke like that. Also, if some other telepath tried to lay a finger on yer, I'd beat the living daylight outta them" Miles promised, opening and closing the lighter as he was in need of another cigarette. 

"That's so sweet of you" Alex burst in laughter.

"Yer my friend, innit?"

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello guys,
> 
> how did you enjoy the new chapter?   
> The story is finished now and I will try to post it here as soon as possible!
> 
> A. x


	6. Rev The Engines And Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pay attention to what's between the lines...

Like a dry flower that someone forgot to remove from a vase, inside which the water turned into a green, poisonous liquid - London had seemed to be devoid of any life since Miles left it. For the first time since they met Alex noticed how harsh and miserable the weather was - or maybe it only became much colder as what he considered a heart of the city had been relocated to the outlying peninsula of Wirral - leaving him shivering no matter if he was having a walk to the nearest shop, or sitting in his bedroom with the heating turned to the maximum. There was nothing to warm him up from the inside, and he had an impression that there was a constantly building up layer of powdery, fine frost covering his porcelain skin.  
Occasionally, he would receive messages from Miles, each of them giving him a short-lasting impression of a flame flashing inside him, like if he was a tired traveller who got treated to a few shots of brandy after a long day of walking in the thick snow. However, each time the conversation faded, he felt even colder than before - exactly as though the strong liquor had widened his blood vessels and let the residues of his warmth forever escape his body.

Tonight, in the dark, dusty interior of a small dive in Camden, Alex was kneeling on the shabby boards of the floor that years ago must have been painted black, since the flaking varnish was making the grain pattern visible. As his bandmates had disappeared in the room upstairs, most likely to have a couple drinks before the show, he had some time to think while he let his hands automatically assembly his guitar gear. The tangle of black cables seemed to squirm like a snake pit and escape from his grip every time he tried to catch them and plug their golden mouths into appropriate devices - and this was the moment when it dawned on him that he was not ready, that the spontaneous decision of playing the gig tonight was purely an effect of alcohol and fleeting confidence which he was now lacking. As he was an experienced performer with a natural gift of putting on a captivating mask of swagger whenever he was onstage, it was not the stage fright that was overwhelming him - long time ago he had learned how to turn it into a state of positive excitation that would push him to do things that would never occur without adrenaline stoking the flame in every cell of his body. However tonight his mind got dimmed by second thoughts putting the sense of his creativity into question. He placed the setlist on the stage monitor and scanned the titles Matt had scribbled with a black sharpie; each of the songs was like a jar full of well-preserved, condensed images from the past that once were ripe and pithy, and now their processed form of a sugary gloop was way off their sunshine-scented vibrancy. The sound of every word that constitutes these songs - which used to be the truthful depictions of his feelings, would hit him straight into his never fully cicatirised wounds or remind him of all the beautiful moments that now were long gone. There was only one song - still rough and not quite finished, but at least anchored in the presence - that he could not wait to present to everyone as though it was a fragment from a holy book of his own life. He thanked for the possibility of singing it tonight with his band, otherwise one day he would probably increase his courage with some scotch and go to sing it by the station pretending to be a busking amateur, just to see any reaction on stranger's faces - even though often he believed that most of people are devoid of deep feelings - to get any confirmation that someone could understand his madness. But more than anything he wanted to see a reflection of this song in a particular pair of brown eyes it was devoted for.   
For another time, he checked his phone, impatiently expecting any message, himself being irrationally scared to text Miles and find out about the proceedings of his travel, like if such enquiry could be considered unwelcome badgering - especially after recent events, when Miles clearly indicated that privacy was his concern. Alex's heart stopped when he saw the notification and with his thumb he automatically unlocked the screen to let himself access the message.

"Miles Kane 18:38  -  Sorry for this radio silence, I didn't wanna worry u. My train got cancelled, I was stuck in Liverpool, froze my arse out at the station. But it's ok now, I should be on time, I'm past Milton atm. Hope it's warm in the club! C U xxx"

Someone tapped Alex's shoulder from the back and when he turned around, with a nostalgic smile still lingering on his face, a tumbler full of amber liquor smelling of smoke and oak wood got pushed into his hand. Trying to halt an outburst of laughter, Matt accurately mimicked his friend's dreamy face expression, in response to which yonder furrowed his eyebrows in confusion and chafe. 

"Breana's got that 'orrible stinky scotch that tha likes so much, 'ave some" Matt said, hunkering down beside him. "Are you sure you don't wanna join us? There's hella lot of time left, mate, everything's set up."

"Nay..." he hesitated, taking a sip of the . "I'll come there in a minute, oreyt? Just need t'  sort this out, t' tube screamer pedal doesn't -"

"You miss Miles, don't ya." Matt cut him off as an entry-level of such sort would never fool a person that had known Alex since they both were toddlers growing up in the same neighbourhood.   
Alex placed the bright green box of the guitar pedal back on the floor and looked down on it like if he was disappointed that the innocent, inanimate device betrayed him and did not help him with his little fraud. Mindlessly, he fiddled with the tone control, repetitively twisting the knob left and right, as if it could help him control the climate of the conversation as easily as he could change the sonority of his instruments. He gave up when the painfully real figure of Matt remained unaffected, and so did his own emotions which he could not just turn down or unplug in order to sink in a peaceful silence. 

"Yeah..." He finally sighed, studying the cracked ice cube in the old-fashioned, lead-glass tumbler, in the scar-like, cut out geometric decorations of which the currently dim stage light flickered. 

"But he's comin' toneet, innit?" Matt kept asking while he set Alex's tube screamer's controls back to their normal positions. 

"He promised, but he's on train in Milton Keynes naa, after a whole day of journey, he must be fokhin' knackered, maybeh I should advise him not to come-"

"Did tha just say 'fokhin'?" Matt slapped his own thighs and stood up rapidly as he burst in laughter. 

"You what?" The other man raised his eyebrow, oblivious to the reason of his friend's unexpected reaction.

"Seven years in London didn't change thine accent at all, but three dates wi' a Scouser did!" 

"Matt, shut it!" He fired back.

"Are you gonna move to Liverpool together and-"

"He's a fookin'-" Alex raised his voice, though with a smile wiping the nervousness of his face - exaggerating his usual pronunciation the curse word - "a fookin' Londoner to the bone, we're not-"

"I bet you'd follow him there if he decided t' go back." Matt interrupted his flow of disclaimers.

_I'd follow him anywhere_   
_A flower always turns towards the sun_

"Matt, please, it's not time for tha', can't ya see I'm-" The man shook his head resignedly.

"I'm sorreh mate, just wanned t' cheer ya up, tha seems a bit stressed?" Matt's voice immediately became apologetic. "Like, I promise t' gig will be all hunky-dory, oreyt? And even if not, we're all gonna get so shitfaced after that no one will remember."

"Thanks... Sorry,  I'm nervous indeed... It's just been a long time..."

"It's just a lil gig for people who love us offstage. Frame thissen and go 'ave a drink with us before thy feller comes."

Alex had no other choice but to obey to his friend's persistent persuasion, so he bit his tongue on which a topper had already crystallised, and he forced his prematurely exhausted body to stand up from the stage floor, after which he followed Matt on the narrow stairs, trying to brush off a prediction of himself tripping on them and falling down head-first when being intoxicated, which was a plausible scenario no matter if he would drink to celebrate a successful performance or to sink down his shame.

He realised he had almost forgotten the feel of heat on his skin when the stage lights exposed his face to the small crowd that gathered in a way to small, in his opinion, distance in front of him. The yellowish glow limited his field of vision and covered the view ahead with a dark filter, blending the individuals into a mass of wagging silhouettes he could no more recognise. He was well aware that every twitch in his face is being noticed and scrutinised while he was waiting for the varnish of his persona to congeal, creating a hard, glossy mask. 

He smiled vaguely, adjusting the microphone, while his bandmates were bustling behind him, checking if the instruments were in tune and trying to find places where their drinks would be both secure and easily accessible. Alex turned around and looked in his friends' eyes in rotation, expecting their positive nods. Next time the floor saw his face, it was changed by confident smirk; like if he was cold-blooded reptile reanimated by the spotlight's heat, he shifted his form into a powerful character of an ultimate frontman that could effortlessly conduct both the band and the crowd. It was a technique of camouflage he had learned years before he met Miles - a way to blend in the mosaic of flashing colours. To save the tender, juicy flesh of his fragile personality, he had to distance himself from whoever was about to adore or hate him as a musician.

" 'Ello" He said quietly with his charming cautiousness. "We are t' Arctic Monkeys... and apparently we're back, but don't tell anyone." The Northerner said, helping himself to balance his body by leaning on a microphone stand. 

In the ado of the anticipating crowd there were voices he could distil and recognise - his mates from the happier times of his life, most of whom he had not seen since his breakdown, cheering an screaming encouragingly. But there was one particular Voice - which would surely be louder and clearer than all the other - that he was awaiting restively. He wished he could stretch the slipping seconds and postpone the sound of the first notes. In the short moment when he got busy adjusting the length of his guitar strap, he felt a sudden smack on his buttock. He laughed and turned his head to face Jamie, but to his amusement, the man was standing well away from him, ready to play, and responded with a raise of his eyebrow. 

_By the big Bowie poster!_

The blood in Alex's veins started to flow faster and his vision became incredibly sharp as if the words pronounced by the Voice were drops of pure narcotic. Despite the gloom of the pub, he got caught by the piercing gaze of the eyes that seemed to shine brighter than the reflector above him. A wave of warmth flooded every recess of his body and for a split second a childhood memory flashed in the back of his head; it was some school performance he could not quite remember - the feeling of happiness and pride mixed with nervousness was a blend that made his knees tremble unwittingly as he know that his parents were watching him from the top of the auditorium. Tonight again he was playing for only one, special spectator. 

_Looking amazing, Aly love. Kick it off!_

Alex smiled to himself, span around and began to play the first bars of his song, directing the glowing energy that now electrified him towards his agile fingers which transmitted it onto the familiar hardness of the strings, from where the power flew through the maze of cables to finally get translated by the speakers and reach people's eager ears. He could feel how receptive had Miles' mind become again - the magic that Alex's voice generated was sinking straight into the black hole the dandy turned into, and the more it absorbed, the more energy was triggered to be generated in attempt to fill the infinite limbo of Miles' esurience. 

One after another, he hit the jars of the songs against the stage floor until the lids popped open revealing canned past that smelled as fresh as it had straight after the stove had been turned off. Tiny drops of spit shimmered in the beam of light as with the flame of his voice - which was now much more mature, chiselled and eaten away by years of underlying sadness and and toxic ways of entertaining himself - was he heating the past back again. Soon, it became a mushy, boiling mass that gradually began to lose all its moist to eventually turn into a layer of smoking soot. He could later dip his finger in this greasy grime and leave a black line marking the divide between the old and new act of his drama. The feel of victory reanimated the vocalist's exhausted body as though he managed to return home with his shield; Miles, who was swaying along with the dancing crowd, sent him a satisfied smile and clapped his raised hands loudly. 

"There's many people I'd like to thank... That it's all possible again... There's also a very special one... Thank you." Alex muttered through the air bubble in his throat, timidly lowering his gaze. "This is called 'Flying Handkerchiefs'. Goodnight..."

The split jigsaw that his band used to be finally became a whole that breathed in the same tempo; they complemented each other like four indispensable cusps of a square. It must have been one of those rough types of telepathy that Miles had mentioned before;  it only took one look to make Jamie turn the air, which he had previously set on fire, back into water - into a large sea in depths of which Nick controlled the warm current of the bass line; on its surface the waves cracked regularly every time according to Matt's sense of rhythm - and on this harmonious organism that the sea was, Alex could sail, pulling on the ropes of his sail of words. He could again use his soft, deep voice to make them swoon and dance for him, so then they could enter people's minds and teach them the steps of his ballet. He reigned over his words. They could win the battles for him.

"I anchored at a butterfly's wing   
Folded in half as you mastered the origami  
With your fingers, watch hands going round  
on reverse gear  
The sky is dappled as I sail the sea  
There's a flock of them lifting me up  
A Persian carpet of your flying handkerchiefs"

The chorus repeated as the song began hulking up despite its delicate structure resembling a lace curtain, through which moving shadows of Alex's feelings could be noticed if the voyeur picked the right angle to look through the pure white net. Miles - a guest waiting in his flower-decked veranda - knew in which place he should stand to see goodman dancing with his slowly growing love. 

"I pick up my orb and become a king   
The light is dim and I hide in the squirming smoke  
Like soul dressed in ribons escaping your lips   
The swallowtail bats its wings  
My sleep is calm under the patchwork blanket  
Of your flying handkerchiefs"

For a second Alex though that some echo effect on his vocal has been accidentally switched on, or that one of his band bandmates spontaneously decided to sing along - but the soft chanting was too loud and clear compared to the distorted sounds coming out from the cheap stage monitor. It was Miles quietly humming in his head, sometimes singing the words he remembered from the memorable text message. 

"You took a measure and tailored an armour for me  
Its lining is silver  
I know it's a show for them when I bestride my crippled strength  
And with a pike in my hand collide with the fears  
But I look up to the princess in the cloister  
Waving at me with your flying handkerchief"

He stood still as Jamie's elongated guitar outro ended the piece - his knees felt like being sculpted out of plasticine melting in the heat of his steaming heart. Ignoring the flattering cheers from the crowd, he turned away and headed to the backstage, knowing exactly that the non-plastered walls were no obstacle for the waves of his thoughts that, like gamma rays, could pierce through almost everything. He grabbed the bottle of whisky - the one that Breana bought, most likely just for him - and swallowed a few gulps until he could not resist the burning sensation in his gullet. The song was enough of disclosure - knowing that a sudden escalation of his feelings might have been a mere effect of buzzing adrenaline and drinks he had had, he decided it was not a right time to let his mind wander towards holy words he was not sure if he could yet use. 

Nick, with a smile on his face and streaks of his curly hair stuck to his sweaty face, walked into the room.

"You wanna play the encore?" He asked, pulling Alex back towards the stage.

"Yeah, sure. Are we doing Moonage Daydream?" Alex smiled back, wiping his forehead and brushed his overgrown hair back with his fingers. 

"Yeah man, come on!"

Hurriedly, he followed his friend back into the light that seemed to make his skin steam and raised his hands to again greet the audience, forgetting it was just a small club, not a sea of people at some summer festivals they used to play. But there was definitely a wide sea ahead. Sweet and alluring, and with delight, he found himself sinking.

_I'm in love_

Swaying his body that was now softened with alcohol, he walked out of the backstage to the main room with his arm wrapped around Matt's strong shoulders. Like if the venue was a time machine, in the darkness variegated by spots of dimmed colourful lights, people were dancing in pairs to some classic tunes from the 60's. Cheerfully, he waved at a girl he had not greeted previously and took another sip of whiskey, giggling at something that his friend said, though the words he heard blended together and he was not sure if he got the right message, although it did not matter when his eyes spotted a familiar, slender figure like a cut-out silhouette against the flashing lights. He pulled away without a word and quickly approached Miles, who was leaning against the wall with a glass of full of iced liquor in his hand.

"Miles!" He exclaimed and stumbled forward to hug the man, however, his state made it difficult to balance his weight, so the attempt ended up as pinning the laughing dandy against the wall from the side, almost causing the two of them to fall. 

"Alex!! Congratulations, it was amazing, laa!" He grinned and stabilised them, putting his glass back on the ledge and strongly gripping the drunken vocalist's waist. 

"I'm just so happy you made it..." He pulled away slightly and examined the man's look - he was wearing a simple black set of a fitted turtleneck, jeans and boots, his hair was surprisingly unkempt and on the floor by his side there was an old fashioned, rectangular leather suitcase with brass protection on each corner, on which his casual coat was discarded. Although still he was classy, as apparently it was an indispensable part of his personality, his usual, overdone style was gone in order to make the travel more comfortable. Despite the fatigue making his face, he looked soft and more approachable than ever, like if by entering the club without a full suit on, Miles allowed his friend to access the secrets of his everyday life. Without the rigid attire of a smart mod, the gentle young man got exposed. 

"So sorreh. Tha must be real jiggered." He mumbled with a childish pout, tilting his head and at the view of casual, relaxed Miles, his thoughts turned into a sweet, fluffy mass resembling a spilled cake icing. His companion smiled at a thought that Alex was one of the people who, under the influence of alcohol, would reveal their long forgotten self that was no longer present in their sober life of serious adults. Alex's face was changed - his normally slightly hollow cheeks looked much softer and his lips looked puffy and glossy as he mindlessly licked the prickling residues of liquor off of their rosy surface.  

_You're endearing_

"I'm warm now, so it's all fine. I'm not that tired, like, I was just sitting on me arse for hours." Miles smiled serenely. "It was such a boss gig, Aly. Yer and yer band lads have it. Real connection, if y'kno what I'm sayin'..." 

"Fank you... We've known eachoda' for ages, dat's it..." He looked down humbly. The amount of beverage that relaxed his throat and over an hour of singing after such a long break from performing made his voice even lower that usual, and his accent thickened making his speech sound like a blurred humming. " 'ow was thy trip?" 

"It was great akhcually, yeah... I'm glad I could spend some time with our mam again..."

"You're sucha mommy's boy" Alex teased.

"I am indeed!" Miles laughed. "Bad for anyone who'd ever fancy tying a knot with me!" 

"Isn't marriage against The Book of Mod?" Alex chuckled and downed what was left in his glass.

"It absolutely is, and I shall never commit such a deadly sin!" He winked, putting on an earnest voice. "I should only get photographed with a new Bardot bird or a twinky male equivalent every week, and forever avoid such a passe, horrible construct."

Alex supported himself against the wall as he began shaking in laughter. "What's a non-passe drink I could get you?"

"How kind of yer. I think I'll go for another spiced gin with ginger ale, please, in a tall glass with a lot of ice, and a slice of orange - if they don't 'ave it, lemon is fine. And a straw." He joked, using the memory of their first, unforeseen encounter at the music venue in East London as a frame embracing the composition of their acquaintance. It made both of them think how much had changed since that day when Alex first took matters into his own hands, ignored the limit of his fear and followed the mysterious Voice to the club. Alex's life had blossomed with a thousand of flowers, and through the thick mask of his friend's aloofness - as the Northerner still knew hardly anything about a person he now - maybe a bit hastily - considered the most important - it was visible that the flame burning in Scouser's chest expanded and changed its colour to glowing red. 

Alex could not really explain to himself why had he drunk so much. At first he had tried to muffle his worries with meditation, which he had practised frequently as though Miles was a tutor who expected quick progress. Then, after Matt's persuasion to join the party, he began to drink simply because everyone else did, and he decided to conform; during and after the gig he was already too drunk, excited and tired to force himself to get into the healing state that meditation was. Now he felt a need to continue beliquoring himself as if he was afraid to suddenly sober up and with clear eyes look at the party he would normally not be ready for. He spent some time leaning on the end of the counter before the bartender noticed him. What could easily be read from her face, she struggled with understanding the slurring Northerner and silently hesitated if she should still serve him - but as Alex was the member of the band, she made an exception. Once he was given the drinks, he stumbled back towards Miles, who was now busy talking with some long-haired mate of Nick's, yet with a wide grin he turned his eyes at the singer as soon as he saw him dodging the dancing crowd. 

"Thank yer!" He reached for the glass that Alex was about to drop and smiled at him, taking a sip through the straw. Alex brisked up as he heard a familiar riff of a T.Rex song coming from the speakers. 

"Come dance wi' me?" The man said, completely ignoring the long-haired gentleman, who walked away slightly confused. 

"Dance? Yer barely can walk, laa."  _Gosh, so fucking sweet_  Miles laughed and shook his head, but eagerly placed their drinks on the ledge and pulled the man closer securing his stability. Alex wrapped his arms loosely over his partner's shoulders as they began swaying gently to the sound of the famous glamrock song. He felt happy. The evening was generally satisfying, he had to admit - the concert was as great as it could be after a long break, he saw people that used to, and maybe still will be a part of his life. But only now, when the delicate, worn out smell of Miles' cologne mixed with the smoky whiskey still lingering on his own lips deadened all other sensations, he felt joyful. Like if there was steam inside the apparatus of the camera lens of his eyes, the surroundings turned into vibrating blur and he could only focus on what was in the middle of the frame. Before he realised what he was doing, he noticed his hand moving towards Miles's forehead, from which he clumsily brushed off the ruffled fringe to have a better look on his face, and rested it on his cheek.

 _He's so beautiful, how could I not see..._  
"You'd look grand wi' silver glitter make-up, like Marc Bolan" He said, stroking the other man's cheek with his thumb and fixing his gaze on the flickering eyes which were now only inches away from him. The dandy lad did not pull away as he found the warm touch delightfully pleasing and calming - yet he remained distant, considering Alex's drunkeness.

Miles laughed in response. "I should check if The Book of Mod allows me to do that."

"You're dancin' wi' an ex-rocker, you're already a sinner"

The mod closed his eyes in an outburst of laughter when suddenly he got stopped by the flowery, scotch-flavoured softness of Alex's lips shutting his mouth in a gentle yet firm manner.  _Fuck no_  The decision was so rapid that Miles, despite his telepathic skills, could not predict it and for a split second remained stiff before the feel of the other man's heated breath sneaking into his own mouth broke his resistance; his weakness got revealed and now the world, as well as he himself - despite his former hesitation -  had a clear proof he actually had a thing for Alex Turner, 30, born in Sheffield, living in Angel, London. As there was no way back now, he leaned in and took control over the chaotic kiss, trying to support the man weakening in his arms.  
Alex felt as though it was his first, juvenile, overly exciting kiss - an electrifying vibration came through his body and the noisy surroundings of the pub turned into a background of shimmering fairylights. Stronger than the alcohol could, the delicate moves of Miles' lips made everything spin around him, or maybe it was them spinning like a porcelain figurine decorating the musical box. As the Scouser let himself get lost in the joy of closeness, Alex could feel Miles' flame growing and transmitting the heat onto his body. He pulled away only for a second only to see his beloved pair of brown eyes now lusciously crinkled in enjoyment, before he kissed him again, slowly and sultrily in a ravenous attempt to fulfil the desire of proximity that he was oblivious to only a minute ago. On the other hand, Miles did not care about the fact that he had let the guard down, or that Alex's rash actions may have been caused exclusively by the whiskey. He wanted a piece of the world's beauty just for himself, he wanted the bond that should not be given to him; he would rather never pull away from these lips.

Tightly, like if he was scared that it could evaporate and disappear in the sticky air of the club, Miles held the warm figure of his friend when suddenly, Alex's knees weakened and his unconscious body overbalanced both of them. He shook him worryingly while he knelt down and placed Alex's head on his lap, while Matt, who noticed the situation, ran to towards the bar to get water for his intoxicated mate.   
  



	7. I hope you understand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello,
> 
> I know I've been inactive for a while - for those of you anticipating the rest of the story: it is fully available on my Wattpad, however I will post it here too.  
> Without revealing anything, some of the content from now on might be sexual and sensitive. I promise Alex is the best person and that the real meaning of the situation will be revealed soon....

The white light of the grey midday coming from the uncurtained windows felt like a spike piercing through his eyes when he woke up in his own bed, still wearing last night's clothes that were now wrinkled and stuck to his body that became sweaty as he must have slept in the same position for too long. An attempt to sit up ended up with immediate nauseousness that made him curl into a ball, a faded memory of his mother's voice - telling him that if he felt sick, he should lay on his left side - repeated in the rhythm of the pounding in his head. The awareness that sooner or later he would need to stand up in order to get some water that could soothe his overwhelming pain was making him snuggle deeper into his balled duvet. There was some angular shape in the pocket of his jeans, painfully digging into his hip; he reached under the covers and removed the phone, automatically pressing the button to let the screen - that glowed too brightly in his opinion - announce that he had already wasted half of a day, and that he had one unread message from last night.  
  
"Miles Kane 23:36 -  Hey Aly. U passed out, Matt took u home and I'm maybe gonna stay here for a bit longer, idk. Plz text me when u wake up. Hope you'll get better soon xxx"

 

He smiled at the set of letters went to make Miles' name - unlike other characters that remained black against the white background, these two words were a spectrum of colours - from cold, blueish grey like a fog at dusk - to lustreless burgundy which funnily reminded him of pickled beetroots with a splash of cream. Alex realised that he had only a hazy memory of whatever had happened after he came out from the backstage and greeted his friend. He remembered the circles of fatigue under the brown eyes, or maybe the lack of eyeliner that usually emphasised the curve of his lower eyelid made them look so tired. Although he was unable to recall what the conversation was about, in his nostrils he could still feel a persistent impression of Miles' scent - a hint of incense-like cologne that went stale, yielding to a smell of damp Liverpudlian wind, and a bit of warm sweat that for the first time made him seem so close, humane, and maybe... enticing?

The rest of the night was a blackness and, considering his adventures in the past, he hoped he did not misbehave. However, there was a new feeling he was sure he had not experienced when he was still sober and sane - so it must have developed during the night, although he was not able to reminisce about its origins. His chest was heavy as though it got damped by all the emotions, his midriff tense like if he was laughing for too long or was ready to scream. Again, he focused on the colourful letters and let the wave of exhilaration heal the pain of his tired body. It was the feeling that enjoys changing its shape, putting on different attire and masks, but despite that, always remains recognisable, a dancing beauty, a queen of the ball.

_I'm in love_

"Me 12:34 -  I'm fine, just hungover af. Sorry for being a trouble last night. Hope I didn't do anything stupid? Wbu, feeling ok? Did u have fun?"

He sat up and closed his eyes to reduce dizziness, preparing himself for the challenge of standing up and walking to the kitchen as the need of water - and probably toilet, as he reckoned that throwing up might relieve him - was becoming unbearable. 

"Miles Kane 12:35  -  Not a trouble, u were amazing as always. x Yeah I had a lot of fun, talked to your lads, they seem great. I left quite soon after u & Matt did though, I was just real tired."

He could not help but grin at another "x" that Miles overused in his texting manner, a symbol that seemed to hit some strings in the back of his mind, but without making any defined sound that he could interpret. Being about to throw up, Alex stumbled into the bathroom and helplessly fell on his knees feeling the sobering coldness of the white tiles, and being glad that nobody could see him in such a humiliating circumstances, let his body get rid of the effects of his own stupidity. When he began feeling slightly lighter, he noticed the phone - which fell out on his pocket - again buzz on the floor next to him. Mindlessly resting his chin on the toilet seat, he read the message. 

"Miles Kane 12:40  - I feel like having a lazy day. Do u wanna come over like in the evening? Help me with the dinner? If u feel well enough x"

Here he was - so addicted, leaning on the toiled bowl, about to laugh of happiness despite the acid prickling his throat and mouth. Like if a sudden flow of electricity made him flash, he undressed himself,  discarding his sticky, wrinkled clothes on the floor and jumped straight into the shower, his hand making an automatic decision to turn on only one tap, letting the ice cold water rinse his body and clean off last night's sweat and nervousness as well as its painful consequences that were troubling him today. Soon, his skin cooled down and he felt pleasingly numb, yet deep inside him the stoke was burning up inexhaustible resources needed to produce a very particular, elevating feeling that he decided not to fight against, letting it turn his blood into pure liquid gold. He felt youthful again, standing in the refreshing waterfall in his tight London flat. Like if he was twenty again, he could again take a risk and become naive, untroubled idealist.

_I'm in love_

"Me 12:59 - I'm feeling ok. Is 5pm fine for u?" He typed the message in excitement, shifting from one foot to the other, negligently drying himself up with a damp towel that he gripped in his left hand, which did not stopped the water from dripping on the floor creating a quickly cooling off, filthy puddle. With his feet leaving wet marks on the floor boards, he almost run into his bedroom despite the overwhelming dizziness, shivering slightly as cold, grey city air coming through a window that he had left ajar hit his naked body and lifted every hair on his skin.  
While awaiting the response, he decided that he owed Matt an apology for his recklessness last night. He felt ashamed for being so immature to repeat basic drinking mistakes that occurred in the past. But this time it was not a mere accident - he deliberately tried to sink his electrified feelings in the amber liquid so they would not be as easily recognisable as they were now - when they hit him with full strength. How was he going to meet Miles tonight if he was perceiving the world through a glowing rainbow filter of love so strong, pure and oddly innocent like if it was his first one - an ever expanding perpetum mobile eating a fuel of its own exhilaration.

"Me 13:12  -  Hey Matty. Thanks so much for taking care after me yesterday. I apologise. Hope I wasn't too stupid"  
With one hand and only half looking at the screen, Alex typed in the text - he recently got better at dealing with his phone, which he had not used too often before - while he sprayed himself with few drops of his favourite perfume. Some reply soon appeared on his screen - although his excitement faded quickly as he hoped that Miles would be the faster one with responding. 

"Matt 13:14 -  No probs bro. Hope ur well. Lol idk what u consider stupid"

Alex scrolled down as he noticed that the message had a video attached. Clicking on the "play" button impatiently, he waited for the black rectangle to turn into an image as it was loading slowly. The pixelated silhouettes soon stabilised and what he saw was a shaky film presenting himself sloppily dancing with Miles, who was stabilising him with a tight embrace and grinning widely as they talked. A head of some person covered the camera's view for a split second and what happened next was Matt's loud gasp at a scene of Alex kissing Miles passionately. The boy's eyes widened in amusement as he watched the recording which took the veil off of his alcohol-infused memories. Like if the reality played on a loop, he could again feel a cold, big slender hand cupping his own face and angling it slightly for a better access to his heated mouth, where his tongue melted, surrendering to Miles' firm yet slow moves. He closed his eyes and once again repeated the situation in his head, evoking all its finest details, all the subtle changes in colours floating under his eyelids. In theory it was just drunken snogging that had happened to him multiple times before - however even in retrospection (or maybe it was just his imagination increasing the colour saturation?) it felt much more vibrant. He was sure that the reason was not the fact that it was the first time he had kissed another male; it was down to his feelings towards Miles that made this sloppy act seem as shiny as New Year's Eve fireworks shimmering on the waves of Thames.   
As he focused more and deepened his  - now almost hypnotic -  journey into memories, he recollected Miles' thoughts, scatters of which he managed to detect. He could swear that at the very beginning, when on the spur of the moment Alex connected their lips together, he could hear a loud, startled "Fuck, no". He felt unable to interpret this outburst, especially because it was so inconsequential with Miles' actions and soon faded into a sea of sweetness and passion that explicitly filled the Mod's body and spread over to warm them both. He had an impression that he had seen a glimpse of a spark that his cherished one had not been quick enough to muffle with his clocklike methods of covering any strong feelings with a protective mask. And he was more than certain that this fusion of two flames - not the alcohol - was what had made him lose control over his own body and fall down like a broken puppet.

"Matt 13:14   -   Don't worry, I'm not gonna send it to anyone. Just thought u looked hella cute. Put a ring on it!"

Not without a smile, Alex rolled his eyes and would surely punch his almost-brother straight in the nose as he definitely had enough of this sort of jibe. However the following buzz of his phone made his irritation along with the whole image of Matt yield to yellow and pink lights of exhilaration. He found himself blushing as though Miles could read his infatuated mind even through the lifeless form that text messages were. 

"Miles Kane 13:14 - Yeah, if it's not to early for ur daft hungover head xxx"

"Me  13:15  -  You're a knobhead xxxxxxxxx xoxoxoxo" Alex texted back, giggling at the style of his response, or maybe just releasing his excitement and nervousness through laughter. When he turned his eyes away from the screen, he suddenly became aware of reality and the nipping cold. Before opening the wardrobe, he again examined his bare body in the full length mirror leaning against its side _I should really finally hang it somewhere_. The paleness of his skin was no more a sign of general sickness - it was almost glowing, making him look noble. Although he had not put any weight on, his silhouette seemed to look softer as though all the tension of his body had been relieved. He focused his gaze on two drops that fell from a streak of his wet hair and were now rolling down his stomach leaving linear traces that curved on the shapes of his muscles, until they stopped on the edge of his trim, soft pubic hair. For the first time in over a year, he looked at himself and decided he felt attractive - and what is more important - that he loved his own body which again felt like home, not an enemy or an obstacle constantly demanding his attention. He combed his hair - on which a layer of greasy pomade was still lingering, making them easy to style - with his fingers, feeling confident enough not to go for his usual, neat slick-back coiffure. The clothes he picked were both comfortable and reviving the smart-casual style he had abandoned for months as he had had no motivation to express himself neither through fashion nor any other way. When he finished dressing up, he checked his phone - again, as it became a symptom of his addiction - and discovered that Miles had sent him a screenshot of Google Maps with his address marked on it. So this was the centre of his universe - a flat somewhere in Belsize Park, where his beloved one's energy was the thickest as there he laid his head every night, there he kept his flamboyant attires - the air of the area must have been full of Miles' indeterminate, pleasing scent instead of oxygen.

His breath - so warm compared to the crisp, almost visible air - accumulated in the crease of his scarf in the place where he tried to hide his lips and now ruddy nose, dampening the grey cashmere wool a little bit. He stopped at the beginning of the alley in which the map application wanted him to turn into in order to arrive to Miles' house. Could the man hear his thoughts from so far away? He crinkled his eyes, doing his best to silence the show of fireworks which in an obvious way unmasked the celebration of love that was now happening inside him.   
 _After yesterday, he probably knows anyway_  Alex thought and tried to swallow the air bubble which was again forming in his throat. With a clicking of his boots' heels announcing his every step, he wandered down the street of mostly white, clone-like houses, until he heard the unmistakable Voice singing snippets of lyrics in broken French, simultaneously examining the content of his fridge and letting out a chain of curse words as he noticed that the shirt he was wearing was missing a button on the sleeve. Alex laughed silently and turned the volume of his own thoughts up to start the banter from afar.

 _Your French turns me on, imma get rid of all the buttons_  

 _Okay but have to sew them back on after, I wouldn't let me mam do it, she'd ask too many questions_   At the moment he could already hear Miles' sonorous laughter coming out of the ajar kitchen window. Scouser's mood  - which suddenly changed its colours to bright yellow and lime-green as he heard Alex approach his house - tinted the late November wind and changed its temperature like if it was now coming from over the steaming greenery of equatorial Africa, carrying the parade of butterflies and birds of the summer.

_You could just let a seemstress do that._

_Not an option! I wanna see you sewing like a nineteenth century housewife!_

_Is that your kink?_

Their laughter met on the opposite sides of the door before Miles opened it, slightly trembling in cheer. Without a word, he pulled Alex for an effusive hug and pressed his lips on the chuckling man's cheek - slightly above his grinning lips - and ran his hand through the fashionably messy hair tamed with a bit of pomade. 

"Looking good today! Are yer feeling better?" The host exclaimed, pulling his guest into the hallway by the waist. "Come in!"

"Yeah, thank you... and you?" He responded, looking away like if removing his gloves was an action demanding all the attention. However, his earlier concerns - whether or not will he be able to hide his feelings - faded quickly as his juvenile, slightly anxious love perfectly fitted the vibrant mixture that Miles' house seemed to be before he could even see something more than the hallway decorated with multiple, elaborate picture frames. The scent suspended in the interiors was like an extension of the owner himself - a lingering record of his previous actions, of his habits and tastes. Alex could pick up a hint of steam signalising that his friend must have recently had a shower or washed up in hot water; a wisp of memorable, incense-like perfume seemed to be coming out of one of the rooms. The way how keen had Alex's senses had become was indicating that Miles was now the element winding up the clockwork of his mind.

The Mod walked behind Alex and kindly took of his coat, which he then placed on the hanger, making sure that it would keep the slightly dampened fabric in shape. 

"You're such a gentleman, you are!" Alex sighed.

"Oh, it's just a habit when yer encounter a person ye wanna be nice to, y'kno what I'm sayin..." He laughed softly, while Alex let his gaze wander and check the details of his beloved one's outfit. He looked so comfortable in a pair of relaxed-fit claret jeans matched with simple black shirt - the only element revealing his usual extravagance was a pair of black velvet loafers with an ornate emblem that were obviously meant to be worn exclusively at home, at the view of which the boy could not help but smile. Scared to spoil cream rug carpeting the hall, he started taking off his his boots before Miles' touch on his arm stopped him. 

"Oh, don't be bothered!" He sighed, but as Alex did not give up, he simply opened one of the cupboard and passed his guest a pair of similar - but navy in colour - velvet shoes. "I ain't gonna let yer walk around in your socks on this cold floor!"

"Aye, granny!" Alex scoffed, putting on the seemingly almost unused and perfectly fitting loafers, wondering if their size was mere coincidence. "It's warm in here, I guess you're just a nesh"

"I am a nesh indeed! I need to be kept in warmth!" The man burst in laughter and slightly pushed Alex towards the kitchen. "Yer 'aven't eaten anything today, 'ave yer?" 

"Fookin' mind-reader." Alex' rolled his eyes at the overprotective remark. It made his mind wander in search for the last time someone was so caring towards him; like an animal who squirms and bares its teeth, ready to bite the vet cornering it with a syringe in their hand, Alex would reject any attempts of help from Matt or his parents. But there was something irresistible in Miles' approach that always soothed Alex and made him obey to any advice he would normally consider annoying and needless. Miles opened a cupboard and handed his friend a chopping board and a knife.

"Could yer 'elp me chop these?" He smiled and placed a bowl full of fresh, washed mushrooms on the square table covered with an old fashioned cloth. It was a not too well veiled attempt to pull Alex's derailed mind back on the tracks and teach it how to be occupied with simple, everyday tasks rather than wallow in the mud of ill thoughts.

"Sure thing. Wattcha cookin'?" Alex asked curiously, carefully cutting the pithy white flesh.

"Some variant of lasagna for lazy people." He chuckled, switching on the oven, making the buzz of the fan inside it deaden the sound of Jaques Dutronc's slightly cracking record spinning in the other room. 

"You never seem to be lazy." Alex observed. In his mind, Miles was an ever busy perfectionist who seemed to follow some very precised yet intangible timetable regulating every aspect of his life.

"I tend to be very lazy when I have nothing important to do. I love to just chill with a book or watch wrestling..." He said, stirring the steaming sauce on the pan and adding some herbs to the mixture. 

"Well, when I have nowt to do, I just end up faffing around and overthinking things..." Alex sighed. He almost felt jealous for Miles who was seemingly leading a lifestyle of such a high-functioning person; he wished he was one of people like that, never stopping on their ascent towards the peak, while he himself was constantly falling off the almost vertical wall, unable to find a right spot to ram his ice axe in. 

"And that needs to be changed!" Miles exclaimed, making a sweeping gesture with a wooden spoon he was holding. He reached out for the bowl of now neatly cut mushrooms and for a split seconds their fingers brushed against each other, to which the temperature of Alex's body fleetly increased like if a lightening hit him, making him glow in the dark. The man caught his gaze for a moment and smirked mischievously - but immediately he turned away to add the remaining ingredients to the sauce, in his mind again beginning to sing memorised lines of the French lyrics. The flavourful smell, the vibrating warmth of the kitchen, the scratchy record - like a time machine which the Mod used to take them back to his era - finally, the volatile, random touch that left a pleasingly burning spot on his hand - flooded his mind with a mixture of flickering sensations. And he was certain that the host knew about it. Was this his plan? To feed his brain with overwhelming impressions that would make his usual sleepy, lazy afternoons forever impossible?

"Miles?" The boy asked after a long moment of silence when the other was busy layering the sauces, pasta and cheese in a stoneware roaster decorated with hand-painted flowers. 

"Yeah?" He smiled at the soft tone of Alex's call. When he opened the oven's door, the blow of hot air belched into his face and lifted his fringe hilariously. 

"Was just wonderin'... Wi' telepathy..." He started, trying to form a coherent question. "Like... It just crossed me mind, 'cause tha mentioned intuition... Okay. Wha' do you think of clairvoyance?" 

"Good question. Hmm..." Miles' voice became lower as he made an attempt to put his thoughts in a logical order. "Well. Seeing future must be bullshit as it doesn't yet exist. Though I believe that some people have their mind clear enough to be unusually observant and join the dots, which might effect in an illusion of predicting the events... I imagine them being like master chess players, but in a life scale... Kinda Orwell-ian, again..." His face became pensive as he sat down on the other side of the table, flattening a crease on the tablecloth with his big angelic hands.  _What a neat freak_   "But otherwise, I am sure there is a possibility of connecting with someone from a very remote area... Probably exclusively when the bond is strong enough though."

Alex nodded, processing this portion of knowledge.  
"Have you ever experienced it?"

"Yes. With our mam. It's sorta obscure, very different to my usual....what you'd call, reading someone's mind... But yeah, every time something goes wrong, she appears in me dream, and in the morning I know I need to call her straight away..." A soft smile again appeared on his face, and he began fiddling with a spiral, snake-like golden ring decorating his right hand. "Did I satisfy yer curiosity?"

"Yeah" Alex laughed timidly, averting his gaze. "Sorry for badgering. I think it's sweet, the way you and thy mam are so close..."

"We are indeed, Alex." He nodded earnestly. "Call us a mollycoddle, but she's a woman of me life. My exemplar. I am who I am because she pushed me to walk these steps... People meet me and they assume I'm posh, that I was born into wealth. I've always had a style and paid too much attention to my clothes and would perfect my behaviour, which covered the truth. Now I've gorra 'ouse and designer suits you like to make fun of, but it's only because one day she gave me motivation to practice the geet, and now I headline festivals... Our mam is a butcher in Liverpool. Now she owns a shop and everything is tickety-boo, but we had ups and downs..." The way he crinkled his eyes revealed an effort he put in covering a reel of memories from Alex's view. "But she's never dissipated me, she's never let me down. So I'm trying to be the best for her. "

Whatever Miles was trying to hide, managed to escape in a form of a thin trickle of fear and sadness dimming the colour lights of childhood. Immediately after Alex picked up on it, Miles changed the topic.

"But I must admit that me first income was morally dubious. Mate, we need to do that, we could play as a team - we should totally go to a casino together. It's so much fun when you're a telepath." He laughed in amusement, evoking a memory of some old man's face when it dawned on him that this young boy with a ridiculous haircut won all the stakes.

Alex laughed at the image that his friend put in his head, but it a hint of doubtfulness crossed his mind. What else did the master of telepathy consider fun?

"I'm not sixteen anymore, Aly. I've got some principles I never break. With the skills that we both have, it's very easy to lose all the morals. Telepathy itself is kinda against the rules established by normal people, if ye will... It gives yer too many possibilities, and, unfortunately, not everyone is good in this world..." He turned away to take the lasagna out of the oven, this time avoiding the blow of hot air. Protecting his hands with two tea towels, he placed the steaming roaster on the top of the stove and pierced it with a fork to check if the pasta was soft enough.

After they finished eating and the serious atmosphere of the conversation dissolved, Alex followed his friend to the lounge, where the record had already stopped spinning on the vintage turntable. He grinned at the poster decorating one of the walls - a cover of Hard Day's Night coloured to resemble Warhol's screenprints. The room looked much less formal than Alex expected, with traces of the host's activities visible everywhere - a porcelain ashtray full of cigarette butts, with a cherry lipstick mark on one of them; some fashion magazines piled on the shelf underneath the table; a half-full coffee mug placed on a round cardboard beer mat with an emblem of some Liverpudlian brewery; a new NME opened at some article that Miles found interesting enough to make notes on its margins with his flowing handwriting. The Mod sat down on the dark blue, velvet settee, and motioned Alex to follow him. His guest took a seat in a reasonable distance, but got immediately pulled closer by the mysteriously smiling man. He wrapped his arm around Alex and embraced him firmly, reaching out the other hand, which Alex gripped eagerly, wishing he could never let it go. He felt he lost his ability to breathe and felt slightly irritated when Miles grinned at his reactions.

"Do you trust me?" He asked, entwining their fingers tightly and resting their hands on Alex's lap. 

"I do, weirdly." The other man muttered, melting under Miles' lasting touch.

"Hah, why weirdly? I would never hurt such an innocent little-"

"Because, for some reason, you don't trust me." Alex cut him off.

"I do trust yer. I have me, errm, issues, in general - but - weirdly, I do trust yer." What was unusual, his voice and thoughts agreed on that, giving Alex a reason to believe it was truth. 

"Close yer eyes." Miles ordered, delicately pecking his friend's eyelids with the velvet of his thin lips. "I'm gonna show yer something. I just thought it's important.. Don't get too carried away and remember I'll be here with you all the time."

A familiar feel of warm, moist breeze fiddling with streaks of his hair made Alex open his astral eyes and face Miles who - dressed all in white, appropriately to the beautiful weather, what made him look like some ethereal being- was standing in front of him on the deck of a ship - much bigger than the usual sailing yacht - that was calmly floating somewhere in the middle of  _Alexander's Sea._

"Only ye know how deep is yer sea. And only ye decide how deep ye wanna dive. But I'd recommend going all way to the bottom." The man smirked at Alex's confused face and took a step away, uncovering what was hidden behind his back. Floating in the water by the side of the ship, there was a brightly painted vehicle with a big, spherical window at the front.  

"I will be here waiting for yer. I will hear what's going on down there and I'll wake you up if something goes wrong. But it shouldn't, because remember Alex, it's all you and yer 'ave a power to control it all..." He smiled reassuringly and kissed the forehead on which a wrinkle of worry formed. "Yer need to know yerself."

Alex nodded and took a deep breath like if he was convinced that it was the last time he would be able to inhale fresh air. He understood and appreciated Miles' intentions, however he hesitated if it was right time to confront monsters of his depths. On the other hand, for the first time he had an opportunity to explore this abyss with a protection of the glass capsule, an image of which Miles had shrewdly put into his mind. He knew that the resistant vehicle was as strong as he was. Having gripped his guide's hand for the last time, he stepped on the rope ladder and descended towards the bathyscaphe. He squeezed through the airlock and soon appeared in the tight interior of the capsule, absorbing last beams of sunlight coming through the glass dome that cut off any noise from the outer world. As opposed to the submarine in which he got trapped last time, the clocks on the dashboard looked much simpler, filling Alex with confidence that he could navigate the machine relying on intuition; maybe it was due to the smaller size of the bathyscaphe, but almost immediately he felt a connection between his fingertips and the blades of steers - between his strong muscles and heart and the engine. He looked up and noticed Miles leaning out of the ship's side, his face expression comforting, although stained with a hint of... sadness? He grinned and waved at Alex cheerfully and send him a message in improvised sign language: with his right hand, he tapped his heart twice, in a rhythm - and then reached out this hand, pointing at the boy, in the meantime using left hand to send him an air kiss.   
 _Did he just...?_  
Alex decided there would be a better time to fully interpret this gesture, although he really wanted to be sure that what he wanted it to mean was parallel with what was actually on Miles' mind. However, even without such certainty, an inexhaustible energy of love run through his body like a compressed steam, clearing his vision and starting the engine of the bathyscaphe. The white silhouette of Miles and brick-red colour of the freshly painted side of the ship blurred when the capsule broke the surface of water and dived into the blue. A familiar group of playful dolphins performed their dance around him, eager for contact with the innocent-minded incomer. However, as the capsule began moving faster towards the blackness, they surrounded him with a tighter circle. Despite a different language, he could easily understand the signals they were sending him - messages of worry and warnings. But Alex insisted on going deep down, focusing his thought to inform them about his mission's purpose. Few of them continued the persuasion, following the descending vehicle - however, under certain level even the most daring ones gave up, startled by the coldness of water and cavernous darkness. 

The light at the front of the bathyscaphe occasionally reflected in a silver glitter of passing shoals, rapidly changing their direction to avoid the unknown predator that the man seemed to be, to then again find a path of a warmer current they were following. Even in their microscopic minds, Alex's actions seemed illogical and suicidal.

The explorer looked up to find that the marine gradient was now reduced to the different shades of black, lightened only by the shaft of the front light that dissolved in the abyss ahead, flickering in the particles of detritus falling down like a white, submerged snow. Suddenly, the beam created a circle on a moving, spotted wall. A sound which he couldn't hear, but could easily feel shook the window of his bathyscaphe and soon he faced a massive eye reflecting the light, like a gem stuck in the grey, smoothed rock. The primeval whale remembered him and was now singing her song of wisdom. She could easily guess Alex's intents and let the human's mind sink in her calm confidence. She was the goddess of this sea, Alex's inner guide that he had not yet discovered how to use; she had surely seen every pebble on the bottom that remained unexplored to the traveller. With what looked like a smile changing colour of her eye for a split second, she swam away, leaving the boy alone in the ink black. 

Not being able to resist the nervousness paralysing his body, he observed the moving hands and quickly changing numbers on the clocks inside the cabin as he could no more rely on his eyes - the gradient reduced to a single shade of black, leaving Alex with no orienting point. Although he was well isolated under the thick glass dome, a thought of how cold the water was would make his body shiver. What if the glass cracked now? His body would be instantly compressed by the pressure of miles of water above him, making him fall down limply like a particularly big flake of the marine snow. No, he was not supposed to even think about such a scenario. An image of Miles waiting for him on the sunlit deck of the ship flashed in his mind. He summoned the strength and once again felt the connection between himself an every part of the hermetic apparatus he was now completely dependant on. According to the speedometer, he was now quickly heading down into the depths, until his precised descent got interrupted by an alien force which shook the bathyscaphe and distorted its trajectory.   
Alex screamed in shock as white suckers covering tentacles thicker than his waist got stuck into the glass dome that now seemed to be as fragile as an uncoloured Christmas bubble. No matter how hard he tried, he could not move the capsule, hopeless in his battle against the filthy animal that had found him, attracted by the light and warmth generated by the engine. Automatically, he closed his eyes in order not to watch the inevitable tragedy - when, in a moment when his mind became extraordinarily clear, he realise that it was his own fear feeding the dangerous predator. It was a materialisation of the terror of going deeper down the vast abyss - a fear of feeling fear, cowardice stopping him from exploring the deeper layer. The barrier of progress was being guarded by the mythical Kraken.   
Was the slick squid trying to actually kill him, or was it just a more aggressive version of what the dolphins tried to tell him? Maybe it was just his own defence mechanisms protecting him from seeing what was hidden deep down, and the monster's intent was to save him?  
Although he was shaking in horror, Miles' earlier words  _I'd recommend to going all the way to the bottom_  echoed in the back of his mind, reminding him of the goal of this scary journey. He closed his eyes to distract himself from the squirming tentacles, and with all determination focused on direction - straight down towards the core of his earth. Unlike before, he did not attempt to muffle the fear - he was fighting it. He felt how hot his blood became, heating up his breath and filling the cabin with whirling steam. When he opened his eyes - if he could see them in the mirror, he would notice how changed they were, their almond shape turning into a symbol of power - he saw bubbles forming on the surface of the glass cover and floating away into the black. The suckers came unstuck from the vehicle as Alex made the water boil around the vehicle; the white, grody flesh shrunk at the burning sensation and soon Kraken drifted away, leaving the human intruder to his deranged plans.  
Alex inhaled the air that came back to its normal temperature after what seemed to be an hour of ignoring his body's desperate demands for oxygen. His own power that came from nowhere - or maybe from the mysterious white hole trapped inside him - accelerated his speed. Like momentary cramps in his muscles, he could feel the vibration of the spinning turbine powered by his inexhaustible energy. With his eyes wide open as he was ready to fight - an win it - he smirked at the clock hand pointing -3000 metres. Was it not up to him how deep the sea was? 

Suddenly, he had to blink a few times to make sure that the flickering lights that he saw were not just his eyes fooling him. He felt an odd weigh in his heart when one of the shiny spots floated closer and turned out to be a giant jellyfish that looked like if it was woven out of LED light ribbons. Opening and closing like a lace parasol, it floated closer along with a parade of its identical copies deluding him with white and rainbow lights. When he crinkled his eyes, he noticed that each of them was dragging something in their thread-thin, glossy tentacles. The preys seemed to belong to the same species - the light generated by their torturers shimmered on the silver surface of their elongated tails and large caudal fins. As he kept observing them steadily, it dawned on him that each of the creatures was a small, mermaid version of himself, with their bodies translucent as if they were only half-existent. To his surprise, some of them were females, and he gasped in horror when, through their glass-like skin, he noticed that a few were pregnant, carrying glowing doll-like figures in their bloated bellies. All the tiny mermaids seemed to be unconscious and exhausted, but still alive; he could feel the neurotoxines spreading through their fragile bodies and slowly cutting off all the senses.

He realised that the matter of the shining parasols was pure guilt anchored at certain events in the past. All those memories of his failures that would flash back in the least expected moments, which usually forced him to physically deaden the thoughts by singing or talking to himself, like if he was losing his mind. Even now he felt guilty for leading himself to such a state - and in the moment the thought crossed his mind, another mermaid got paralysed by the tangled tentacles. The monsters of past were slowly killing him and each time he stopped believing in himself, they would grow and multiply. 

Alex covered his face with hands, trying to find any solution. How come that his mind was so cannibalistic, with some of its parts gaining too much power like a cancer? He tried to evoke any upside of the guilt and feel of defeat he had ever experienced. His failures would make him overwhelmed because he cared, because he attempted, because he was trying to satisfy people he loved. Because he had his goals and ideals.   
He almost screamed at the view of an enormous, scary creature that emerged from the darkness. What he could see was a row of giant, slim sharp teeth lit by an organic lantern of a size of his head fixed to a long antenna. The monster's skin was scarred and wrinkled as the time and experience had gotten recorded on its body - but stripes of bright colours were still visible as if it had been born in the bright side of the sea and at some point of its life turned into a scary resident of the depths, a hidden legend. But despite its appalling exterior, it was Alex's ally.   
Only waiting for its master orders, with razor blades of its fins - resembling Asian made of paper with a marbling pattern - the walloping fish cut furiously through the entanglement of glowing threads, making the water whirl by snapping its maw and swaying the bright blue lantern. Soft, fairy-like figures of mermaids floated limply, extricating from the cut off tentacles that were gradually losing their glow. Once unfettered, one by one, these beautiful creatures started dissolving into particles of shimmering dust while the enormous fish kept swallowing the parasols in rage, forever burying them in the limbo of its mouth. With his hands stuck to the window and his mouth ajar, Alex observed the spectacle, knowing that it was not death of the mermaids - they were long lost parts of himself now coming back to him. With every little explosion turning a creature into glitter, a wave of excitement flew through his body like a shot of particularly strong drug, until he felt capable of doing anything, certain of his full potential. He was about to cry while watching the beauty of ever alternate destruction and creation; an unseen beauty of his own self.           

With an energy that made him feel like if he had been born again in his ideal form, Alex continued his journey down. Deep inside he knew he was getting close as he could feel the pressure of all the layers of his whole person mounted above him. Eventually - although he had lost the track of time - the shaft of light met a flat surface. Dust and sand began swirling and dancing around the capsule when he got close to the ground and while slowly falling back down, it revealed a vast desolation. Here he was, at the bottom, at the base of himself. And as he kept curiously scanning its chasms and prominences, with horror he observed that it was absolutely lifeless. 

5000 metres below the lovely sunlit landscape where he would get tanned and laugh with his beloved one - after an exhausting and scary expedition through the infinite darkness that was still hiding innumerable monsters and friendly beings - Alex discovered that he was hollow.

And when he was about to break down and lose control over the bathyscaphe that trembled as though it was about to fall apart - an unusual phenomenon caught his eye. From one of the cracks there was a fountain of bubbles full of black smoke coming out quickly. In a radius of dozen meters, this odd source was surrounded by a colony of colourful, unidentified beings resembling falbalas of a flamenco dress that gathered there, eager for some warmth in this dark, hostile environment.   
It was pure love spurting from the bottom of his sea. In a form of a warm current, the bubbles would later reach Miles waiting for him at the outlying surface as well as many other important people, places, even thoughts that he kept deep in heart. But at the source, the love was not directed - appearing from nowhere, it was heating up primeval rocks that had never seen the sun - an inexhaustible love that was being generated by him for himself, giving life to all the creatures - from the particles of plankton to the beautiful, ancient whale of reason. A fuel from the core of his earth making the clockwork move.

In much less thick darkness of the living room, Alex got woken up by an unexpected feel of bliss. He rolled to the side to find that Miles was not here anymore, however he had been caringly wrapped in a soft, blue blanket. On the edge of the table there was a note scribbled in black biro on a folded sheet of paper. From the flowing handwriting the boy could decode a message that instantly made his heart melt:

"You're the bestest strongest little creature. Well done Aly. Sleep well <3"

He dropped the note as his body got weakened by a next wave of intangible pleasure that this time lingered for longer, radiating from somewhere in between his two first chakras and tinting his vision with red and orange flows of energy. The impression repeated overlapping with the previous wave that had not yet vanished, making him limply rest his head back on the settee and give in to the unforeseen sensation. Like a tender yet overwhelming vibration, it permeated his every muscle and relaxed it, turning him into a helpless mass of delight. Although he could feel it very clearly, the unusual pleasure he had never experienced before seemed to be only loosely related to his body. He tried to localise a source of it, but a new wave blocked his brains with impulses.   
He realised that somehow, in a most surreal and unexpected way, Miles was softly making love to him. 

_Alex_

_God, yer so beautiful_

A blurry, pastel image got pushed into his mind and a smile flickered on his lips when it dawned on him that he got trapped in an utterly sweet wet dream that the host was shamelessly having about him. Had Miles not mentioned that his dreams were usually lucid and so he could control them at least to some extent? Now, unwillingly again having access to his mind, Alex could watch how the other man imagined his face - soft and erubescent, his eyes crinkled as he could only barely force himself to keep them open in the multiplying waves of pleasure; his mouth slightly ajar, forming shapes in attempt to pronounce some words, but he could only let out quiet, helpless moans. And it made him happy how in Miles' mind he was indeed stunningly beautiful, although not idealised at all.

He almost fell on the floor when he placed his unreal, slack feet on the ground in attempt to stand up and walk towards the source of these sweet, orange waves. Obeying to the usual rule of dreams - where even most desperate running is like walking in a pool of maple syrup or custard - the vague impressions of thrusts were piercing Alex's body in big intervals, allowing him walk carefully, supporting himself against the wall.

 _Open yer eyes... Yeah, look at me Aly..._  

_So beautiful_

He had to stop every couple steps, heedful not to gasp every time another wave - painting a delighted smile on his face - made him glow in the dark.   
Although so pleasing, the overwhelming feeling was only remotely sexual - closer to the idea of almost innocent, satisfying intimacy. It was  making love almost devoid of desire, devoid of all the shame, insecurities and unwanted memories related to the physical contact - it was a liberating, joyful act that did not have to follow any limits of the body. 

_Oh, yer an angel..._

Carefully avoiding stepping on the creaking boards in the hallway, trembling in bliss and simple happiness - he managed to reach Miles' bedroom and squeezed through the door he had left half open. Despite that, he felt he had crossed a certain border; unlike the tidy kitchen and lively yet deliberately arranged lounge, this private space revealed that the Mod was in fact not much of a neat freak. Books and records along with some unidentified paperwork were scattered all over the parquet floor covered by a small, soft square rug; his favourite guitars were leaning against the wall in the corner; last night's clothes were hung on the back of a vintage folded screen, and the sweet, heady scent was such a concentrated essence of the owner that one could distil it from the air and close in flacons. Alex felt that he had broken a promise of never again disturbing Miles' privacy - the bedroom was like a real life allegory to whatever the man wanted to keep securely locked in his mind. But a view of the relaxed, lanky silhouette of the host stretched on the soft covers was enough to brush his worries off. 

_I adore you_

In reaction at this sudden confrontation with real image of Miles for the first time this night made his body respond in a much more standard way. And like if it was the most natural thing for him - who not so long time ago had considered himself tragically heterosexual - he felt the accumulated feelings and desires flash and he realised how much he  _wanted_   this man who was laying in front of him, calmly submerged in his dream. How much time must have Miles spent every day just on mere grooming? Or was it down to what in Alex's opinion was natural perfection that even his slim, white feet were as beautiful as his hands and face, making the boy ashamed of his own probably too long toenails? How come that even in deep sleep he looked so graceful, with a silk kimono exposing his naked chest as he must have felt too warm in the well heated room? Still smiling at the constant flow of sweet words and the soft pleasure relentlessly emanating from an indefinite spot inside him, Alex knelt on the bed gently and hovered above his beloved one. He just wanted to fondle him, to touch him as gently as he could, make him forever drown in love that he could not wait to show him. Carefully, like if Miles was a sculpture made of dry sand, he placed a kiss on these delicate lips, feeling the Mod's steady breath tickle his delicate skin. Some streaks of Miles' hair were still wet and quite tousled, indicating that the man had had a shower not so long time ago. As the water had removed any perfumes that would normally add to his powerful, everyday persona, Alex could smell the natural scent of his boy's skin - sweet, fresh and youthful. Had it crossed his mind before that the Dandy's age was so indeterminate? His beautifully shaped body and his overall wisdom hinted that they could have been peers, however the softness of his skin evoked juvenile adventures in the red beams of sunrise. With his heart pounding heavily in his chest, narcotised by a mixture of love, nervousness, happiness and desire, Alex lost himself in very slow and cautious kisses forming paths along the distinct collarbones, down his chest and rhythmically elevating and falling stomach. The pleasure, although so soft, became unbearable, making it hard to tame moans and delighted laughter that was about to escape his mouth. He got furtherly encouraged as could feel how calm Miles became under these warm touches from above the surface of consciousness. 

_Oh fuck_

He hesitated for a while when the streaks of his dark, still slightly greasy hair brushed against the edge of fitted, white boxers that the man was wearing. Maybe because he expected it to feel alien, but in fact he was so comfortable with an idea of pleasing this particular male that it even surprised him? On impulse, he leaned closer and let the edge of his lips slowly explore the surface of hot, hard shape stretching the crisp white fabric. Too scared to wake him up, he began caressing slowly Miles with his breath and a wet softness of his tongue.

_I adore you, I adore you, I l..._

In the moment when Alex most delicately gripped the bulge with his lips, Miles rapidly sit up and pulled away, for a moment staring at him groggily, with a shade of a delighted smile still lingering on his lips and wide yet still tender eyes, until, after a long while, his face completely changed its expression. In a split second he feel of pleasure was gone and a sudden confrontation with reality hit him like a stinging pain.

"What the fokh, Alex?!" Miles exclaimed in shock, gripping the skirts of his patulent kimono. The boy immediately jumped off the bed and tried to squeeze any words through his now completely tense throat. 

"I...I'm sorry, I..." He stuttered, unable to control the pitch of his voice. "I thought... You had a dream about me..."

"Yes, a fokhin' dream!!" He shouted in rage. "I didn't mean I wanted it now, in real life, I-"

"But you made me feel it all! I figured... that you fancied me? That we had a connection-"

For a second, the dishevelled Mod looked outside though the window until he furiously cut Alex off. 

"There's no connection mate, yer a beginner telepath, that's it! And this was a proper abuse!!"

"I'm so sorry... I didn't..." Alex was about to burst in tears while his body that just minute ago had been slack because of the vibrating pleasure, was close to blacking out as he felt like a pierced inflatable toy.

"God... I just... I need some time to think" He said more calmly, looking down at his feet, but soon raising his head up again to repeat the message once again until it was understood. "Leave me alone now."

"But it's like three in the morning, can't we just-" He felt trapped like an animal, scared of the pair of brown eyes he once was sure that loved him.

"I don't care. Please, Alex. I want yer to go." He repeated sternly. His thoughts were impossible to read. "Please."

Grabbing his coat from the hanger and making his way out before putting it on, Alex run out into the Arctic air of the solitary streets. Like if it was alcohol again pulling the strings attached to his limbs, making his journey possible with his brain switched off, the haze uncovered his vision only when he faced the green board of the front door of his apartment, with a bank card and a receipt still in his hand as he apparently had hailed a taxi. Mindlessly, he opened the door with the keys he fortunately had not misplaced anywhere at Miles' house and walked into the dark interior. Had the heating stopped working again, or was it the temperature of the universe that dropped far below the scale? Sloppily like as though he was intoxicated, his feet carried him to his bedroom. In an unfortunate accident, he tripped over a guitar cable he had foolishly left on the floor by a small amplifier, and fell straight into the full length mirror he had promised to hang in the hallway. Laying on the floor, with his feet tangled in the tentacle-like cable, he observed the light of the rhythmically passing cars flicker in the smithereens. His blood that once was pure gold was now cooling down, covering his arm in a pattern of dark trickles. Here he was - floating unprotected above the ground of his own sea, with his lungs shrunk by the pressure, forever unable to breathe, while the earthquake blocked the warm, life-giving source.  
  


 


End file.
